"After Patti, I sold all my record collection because I felt I couldn't have any music around me that didn't do something to me like Horses did. For about six months, I had no other records, except Lou Reed's Berlin as I felt that was comparably powerful and emotive. After those six months, punk started. I thought punk was fun and it reached the anger in me that needed to come out. I had been sent away to school; being sent to a boarding school was like being sent away to prison by parents who apparently loved you. So, I had a lot of anger and distress at this strange turn of events and I started going to punk gigs. The first gig I organised to see was the White Riot tour with The Jam, Buzzcocks, Subway Sect and The Slits. It turned into a bit of a riot and we were these schoolboys in our uniforms with one teacher to chaperone us, and suddenly chairs and tables were flying through the air. After that, I was banned from organising any more trips to punk gigs. So, even though I was banned, I decided to get the school magazine to employ me as a journalist. I would try to interview the first local punk band that came down to Shrewsbury. That happened to be Wire, who were a fascinating band. I think Pink Flag is one of the only punk albums that has stood the test of time. It is a remarkable piece of music. There are songs that last 45 seconds and others that last two or three minutes. It is quite a feat to pull off a 45-second song and make it work. Wire were wonderful to interview – intelligent and articulate – and their music was brutal and yet humorous at the same time, which was a very odd thing for punk. To call an album Pink Flag, after the label that the Nazis put on gay people in the camps, was an incredibly brave thing to do in such homophobic times. Punk, although liberating in many aspects, was pretty homophobic until Tom Robinson came along and confronted it directly. Pink Flag was a miracle of creativity in these short, harsh little songs. Even to this day, when I listen to it, I think it is a masterpiece. I think it would have influenced a band like Pixies. I don't know if Pixies ever heard Wire, but I would be very surprised if they hadn't."

"Okay. I do come back to The Godfather, and to be honest, if I had more time to think about it, I would probably leave The Godfather out only because I know that it’s a film that is often touted. But primarily, I think it’s about Pacino for me. I think all of the things that make The Godfather what people call the perfect film, where you’re taken into a world where, for most us, is really just — we’re never going to go there ourselves, into the world of the mafia and organized crime, but to see how it’s connected to family and how that is the basis of this story being the bond within a family, is so foreign to, I think, most of us. Foreign as far as where killing is part of family life. It’s just so unusual, but at the same time, it’s done in such a way that they make it feel perfectly normal. Of course, again, there’s Brando, there’s Pacino, and then in the second one we see De Niro. I think I’m often drawn to films primarily because of the performances, and speaking of performances, I would then probably move to Dog Day Afternoon with Al Pacino for very different reasons. We see Pacino in Godfather in an extremely restrained performance. And then, of course, in Dog Day Afternoon, we see just this loose mess of a human being spilling out out all over the place, and he’s just absolutely electric and just as compelling and just as unpredictable as the character Michael Corleone in Godfather, but completely at opposite ends of the spectrum. I just think Pacino is someone for me who, like Brando, I just find him completely watchable and can’t get enough of him. Anything he does, really, I would find compelling. Although there have been performances lately that haven’t been as interesting as the earlier stuff. [Godfather and Dog Day Afternoon] are so different. They’re really, really different. I think Godfather is a better film, but I think Dog Day — that performance — John Cazale‘s performance in Dog Day, as well — and as you know, I have really eclectic taste anyway in the kinds of things that I like, and the kinds of jobs that I choose, too. I get just as much out of both of those films. The potential energy that exists in Godfather versus Dog Day is that they’re just extreme, explosive kind of sweaty performances of Pacino [and they are] are two completely different things, but they both affect me a great deal."

"That one was quite deep for me because again, growing up in church and being a believer; my family being from the West Indies - my mum’s side from Jamaica, my dad’s side from Dominica - I remember going to church and it was authentic West Indians there in their 40s, 50s that now live in the UK but have kept these traditions, they were singing these songs just without the drums. So when I first heard this, something just went - ‘Hang on?’ I remember being four and hearing this person sing that song but swap Selassie for this or that. It had that same spiritual element I was so used to, just in a very different form. It was like a weird full circle thing for me. It was almost like going back home. These drums are taking me somewhere, but also I'm being carried by these songs I know. It was beautiful to check out more of what Count Ossie was doing and people that were part of his band like Cedric Brooks. He was infusing a lot of the jazz elements that he's hearing from Coltrane or Ornette Coleman. That's deep, you’re deep in the heels of Kingston, aware of Ornette and them man. Like Duke Ellington had to come and visit him, you know, there’s a photo of him and Duke Ellington in the bush. You know he's got something that's important, not only important for culture but it's spiritually important for the Nyabinghi tradition. For me when I heard that record, particularly Grounation, where they’re going through loops for 20 minutes, it’s that thing again with soundsystems where you ‘wheel up a riddim’ or at church when the tune would just keep going. It was something I’d never heard but I also felt like it wasn’t foreign, those experiences are so wicked and that influenced the whole fascination with drum culture and drum languages, spirituality connected to drums, music orientated around the drums. I got into Batá and music for the Orishas and things that are all over the Diaspora in West Africa, the Caribbean, South America. And when you listen to it, the recording’s so rags but it just couldn't work if you put it in Abbey Road. It gave me a bit more confidence when I was doing my record that if I go to someone’s house and I show up with a handheld recorder, as long as it feels right it doesn't matter. Big studio, small studio, my phone as long as it’s got that feeling that I was going for."