"It's really weird: I kind of had a bit of a problem with The Teardrop Explodes. I really didn't like them as a group, and it's very strange because our recording desk in Cardiff… I think Kilimanjaro was recorded on it. But as soon as Julian Cope left Teardrop Explodes I just completely turned onto him, and especially this record, because it's brilliant. There's some benchmark songs on here, which are hard for anybody to top. There's one called 'Bill Drummond Said' which is just fucking brilliant, and there's a song called 'Reynard The Fox', which is just… he does such a brilliant job of having a narrative of why he disagrees with something but pitching it in such a beautiful way. And there's 'The Bloody Assizes'; Julian Cope, now, has this afterlife of being this writer who seems to mix the high-rise block of ideas in his head with reality. It's really amazing. And he's become some sort of historian about myth and Krautrock, and I loved one of his quotes when he did an interview for this book: "I only look like this because I feel like such a cunt when I'm crying inside all the time." This record shows why he's such a brilliant solo artist. It's got a lovely, bucolic flintiness to it. There's something about it; you realise he's detached himself from his previous life and The Teardrop Explodes, and he's just out there in the woods doing something. And you cannot like a record which has a cover of the artist's… you know. Naked inside a big turtle shell on the cover. I remember it got really mixed reviews, but I think a lot of people do consider it a classic. I do; he's done other good stuff, but it's his best record."

"Any recording of this just kills me. Faure's writing feels incredibly contemporary to me, in the way the melodies and harmonies move. The 'Paradisum' has a quality about it that reminds me of Massive Attack's 'Teardrop', or maybe it should be the other way around.

I also sung this in my boys' choir at school – I was a boy treble before my voice broke. Usually, I was more interested in the coach trips to concerts, the mucking about in the back row of the bus, as much as performing. But I remember us singing at Malvern Cathedral, surrounded by candles, and what a profoundly beautiful moment it was. Every now and then, odd moments from childhood just bounce back at you, and I'm always happy when it's this one.
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