"It probably won't be too much of a surprise that I picked this. I knew the Dinosaur L tracks and the big ones from compilations, and I didn't really know anything about who Arthur Russell was, until this was reissued in 2004. I was finishing my PhD at the time, trying to get something mathematical done and listening to this record over and over again. It's the kind of a record you can do something else to, but I always used to get really distracted by it. It still sounds like absolutely nothing else to me, it was such a revelation. He's such an amazing melodist and it's so sonically stimulating and different - that processed cello and voice, you still don't hear that anywhere else. But also the way the record is structured. There are parts of it that feel half-finished. It feels more like a collection of demos that were made spontaneously. It's not like a Hendrix album where everything would be meticulously produced, though there's something really wonderful about that. The life wasn't squeezed out of it. His voice has been so important for me. I was already singing on my music before I heard this, but I was always disguising my voice as much as possible. His voice is so beautiful and distinctive, but it's not the classical idea of what a singer should be. So it gave me a way in to singing on my own tracks, even though my voice is weak and pedestrian. It's a way for those of us who are non-traditional singers to not have to think about comparing ourselves - y'know, I'm a singer, and Marvin Gaye's a singer… He's like the vocal equivalent of a Stradivarius. But it gave me a way of thinking about singing that wasn't about being professional; it's about embracing the amateurishness and foibles of my voice."

"I was 12 when it came out. I remember it very well. It was a Saturday morning, and I went round to a friend's house and he'd been out shopping that morning and he'd bought the album. And we played the album, and it was something like you'd never heard before. We were in the middle of what I might describe as somewhat traditional rock music – you know, The Stones and Led Zeppelin were at their peaks. This thing came along and it didn't sound like anything else. The production values, the production's quite dry, and also you've got this visual of Bowie with the spiky hair, it just was something so different. You felt that music itself just got changed, and that rock music per se moved into some other place. The best way I can describe it is that rock music became modern. It became a new thing. I have no doubt in my mind that David Bowie is the greatest solo artist that Britain's ever produced. I can't think of a better solo artist. The other thing I would say is I thoroughly underestimated the brilliance, and the input made by Mick Ronson, in the period he was with the band. I had no idea Mick Ronson did all the orchestration, and did all the arrangements. So when you're listening to a track like 'Life On Mars' off Hunky Dory and, this album, 'Moonage Daydream', when you take into consideration that he did the string arrangements, that really puts him in a different sphere as well. And without Mick Ronson I don't think it would have sounded as original as it did. It made me so sad seeing this documentary about him [Beside Bowie: The Mick Ronson Story on Sky Arts], somehow the Bowie machine swept Mick Ronson under the carpet, which is incredibly unfair. It was heartbreaking, to be honest. I felt really sorry for the guy that he'd been so underestimated while he was alive. At least now we can celebrate his brilliance."

"The reason I’ve chosen the Donna Summer album is not truly because it is a record I’ve played a lot. There is one song on it that changed my career. It’s a song that changed a lot of people’s perceptions of music and it’s, obviously, ‘I Feel Love’. I remember when I first heard ‘I Feel Love’, it sounded alien. I hadn’t heard anything like that before. There wasn’t anything like that before. Somebody had the forethought and the invention to actually come up with something with electronic sequencing that people could dance to. It pulsated in a different way. That person was Giorgio Moroder. I am very grateful to Giorgio Moroder for inventing this way of thinking and for the other records he’s made. I think he is a terrific talent and I loved the work he did on a lot of movie soundtracks, particularly Midnight Express and Cat People. I have all his work. ‘I Feel Love’ was visionary – that’s all I can say about it. The song, along with The Sparks’ album Moroder did [No. 1 In Heaven], was the sort of sound I wanted to make. I was just learning electronic music and how to sequence things. Without a doubt, between Moroder and Kraftwerk, those were the people leading the way – that paved the streets for me. Without ‘I Feel Love’ there wouldn’t be a lot of electronic dance music. That’s the DNA we all used. Moroder, for me, had a period where he was defining the future and it was very unnoticed by a lot of people, perhaps because he was more of a producer than a writer of a lot of songs. As for I Remember Yesterday, it’s a funny album as half of it is electronic and brilliant and the other half is very traditional and is okay. It’s a strange balance but a very important album because of that track."

"This was also quite a challenging record for me. I bought the 7"" of 'Ceremony' when it came out, and I thought that's what Movement was going to sound like. A very pretty, emotional, bucolic record, and of course it has moments like that, but in a strange way it's almost darker than Closer. When I was 14 or 15-years-old I was full ensconced on the cult of Ian Curtis, so when I got Movement I listened to it and tried to decode it... how many songs were influenced by Ian Curtis, how many songs were written by Ian Curtis, were they trying to communicate with Ian from beyond the grave. It's certainly the darkest of all the New Order records, and after this they became much more melodic and happy. The first track on the record is quite uplifting, then everything else is quite dark. One of the things I've always loved about Bernard Sumner's voice is there's a naive, vulnerable quality to it. I was at an airport the other day and 'A Perfect Kiss' came on, I hadn't listened to it in about 25 years, and it's such a perfect song. His vocals are sing-songy, like a nursery rhyme, but they're so effective. Each of these records that we've talked about, one thing they have in common is that they're all primarily electronic. At the time I was completely surrounded by very traditional rock music, and it felt interesting and subversive to be listening to these records primarily made with electronic instruments. I think that affected me a lot. I was a guitar player at the time, and I was so bored and frustrated with playing the guitar because it didn't do that much. I couldn't figure out how to make a guitar not sound like a guitar, and then you hear all these electronic records with all these textures and atmospheres and sounds that I'd never heard before, and I found that quite exciting."