"I’m a latecomer to Sharon Van Etten. I only heard this towards the end of last year and it melted me. It’s actually my girlfriend and I’s song. “The song is about Etten bidding farewell to New York, where she was living in her 20’s. When she was leaving the city, she wanted to write a song that was a farewell to the landscape of her 20’s, which became “Seventeen.” In the journey of writing the song she visited these places where she danced or met people and where she’d had these formative experiences of her young life. One of these places was a club that’s now an Italian restaurant. “It’s a song about gentrification, about how a city has different lives, and that feels so true to me and it really resonates. On my walk to the pool that I swim at in London, I walk past this derelict building which used to be a club I danced in when I was 17 and coming up to London. “Now it’s empty and filled with squatters and whenever I walk past it, I feel this pang of something that I can’t describe, but that “Seventeen” managed to encapsulate. That feeling is like, ‘All these memories took place in that building and only the people who were there can tell those stories. Anyone else who walks by just sees an empty building, or an Italian restaurant.’ “I think “Seventeen” is really about that. How street corners and physical spaces can have very powerful human memories and experiences hidden in the brick and mortar. So, for me it’s a song that encapsulates a feeling of loss - the loss of innocence perhaps."

"When Oasis first started, very early on we used to cover ‘Feel The Groove’ by Cartouche. There’s a tape of that live gig knocking about somewhere. I was the dance music head in the group. I was into indie music like everyone else, New Order, The Smiths and then one night in 1987 someone took me to the Hacienda because I’d been reading about this music and I just stood there, drinking Colt 45, thinking 'Well, this is shit…' But then someone else took me the week after and said, 'Have one of these.' And put a little pill in my hand. And within an hour I thought that this music was the greatest thing that I’d ever heard in my entire fucking life. It was a life changing experience. The thing about the Hacienda was it was a superclub before superclubs existed. Acid house only lasted two years and that was it at its best. If you go to a club now you might as well be listening to the same song all night. Back then they played everything, hip hop, electro, acid house, techno and it was all mashed up. It was on your doorstep and full of people who were skint. It was only two quid to get in, they sold Rizla behind the bar so you could skin up and acid and Es were just entering the cultural stream. They were the best years of my life and probably every other day since I’ve thought, 'I wonder what those tunes were called?' Then I heard this album was coming out, I put it on at home and I was instantly transported back into that nightclub. And I thank the people who put this album out. It reminds me of great days when I was young and enjoying life to the full."

"Lyrically Dizzee Rascal is phenomenal, and musically he's one of the most progressive, forward thinking grime artists and musicians of our time. He won the Mercury Prize over ten years [before Skepta], which says it all. This record was what I listened to when I was commuting to and from Slough, when I was just starting Gallows, I was listening to it nonstop. I've loved grime since I was young, I've always loved hip hop but grime was so quintessentially British, you couldn't have made it anywhere else. To me grime is punk, more now than ever. Punk to me was the sound of disenfranchised youth, and that's what grime is. You take everything away from young people and tell them what they can't do, at some point they're going to say 'yes we can', and that's what's happening now. They feel discriminated against and now they're making the right fucking decisions by showing that. I think it's a classic record. What's really nice to see is that back when this arrived on the scene it was still very much about beef in the grime scene, people were still writing diss tracks, whereas what's happened recently is that when he played those tenth anniversary shows you just see everybody celebrating it, celebrating the fact that here's an album that did so much over a decade ago, and now we've just had a second [grime Mercury Prize winner]. I love that, but my problem is that there haven't been more. I love that these are being used as bookmarkers, as milestones, but we need a lot more than that, more progressive, forward thinking, unique individuals. That's what the Mercury Prize is supposed to be for, though it misses more than it hits."

"Absolutely blown away by the world of Star Wars, Empire and Jedis. [But] my favorite moment of the three is actually in The Return of the Jedi. And I argue this with people who are real Star Wars freaks. “Ewoks ruin the movie.” If you’re going to trifle over Ewoks, and you’re not going to talk about how great the speeder bike scenes through the redwood forests are, then f–k off. Those are some of the greatest action sequences… Okay, yeah, there’s some cute critters to sell merchandise. [But there’s] some [scenes] that I couldn’t even dream up with these unbelievable hovercrafts and modern-looking Stormtrooopers. And Jedi has the best moment. [It’s] at the very end when the Emperor is trying to pull Luke over and, of course, Luke is getting the s–t kicked out of him and getting electricity blown at him. And Luke finally takes his lightsaber and throws it aside and says, “No. I’ll never join you. I’m a Jedi like my father before me.” And the Emperor says, “So be it…Jedi.” And it was the fact that the f–king devil himself gave Luke props and called him by [who] he was. It empowered him. That always gets by people, but that’s my stand-out moment. But Empire, when that movie ended in a cliffhanger, my life was a cliffhanger. Until the next one came out, you couldn’t talk to me, you couldn’t talk to me, dude. I was hanging out with my Ungnaught action figures. Everything in my life went back to, “What do you think is going to happen next to Han Solo?” I promise you, you talk to my family and they will go, “Dane was bananas.”"