"It was probably one of the first times I picked up some listening headphones in Spillers Records in Cardiff, and I was looking for a gift for my best friend. I knew [Hans-Joachim Roedelius' band] Cluster existed but I was never really a fan – I hadn't found the time to get into them. So, I didn't know anything about who Roedelius was, but I was really intrigued by this record. I listened to it and it was absolutely incredible. I bought it for my friend and then realised that I had to have it for myself, so I went back the next day to get myself a copy. It's been an important record for me because it was the first time I heard a record that included synth and pianos and percussion and that was mechanical in parts but also very beautiful in others. It was the first time I started to visualise arrangements on different instruments and started to exit the view that everything had its place. The album has beautiful recurring themes that sweep in and out of the record. So for me, I could hear things mathematically but it also made me think about how you can piece music together as well. It's beautiful and some of the songs are playful - one of them sounds like the theme to an awful TV cop drama - but it then evolves into these beautiful soundscapes. A song like 'Le Jardin' just transports you to this different place. I always want a song that can remove you from your current situation."

"There’s a funny story here. When I was with Dave Roth he would always talk about Tom Waits in a very respectful way which was rare. I never heard Dave speak reverently about anybody and I didn’t even know who Tom Waits was. I had never come across his music. But all through the years, Dave would always say, ‘Yeah, like Tom Waits’ and I’d just say ‘Yeah, yeah!’ And then I was on tour with Whitesnake and there was this band opening up called Bad English whose singer was a guy called John Waite and I thought “Wow, this was what Dave was talking about? Hmm, it’s kind of strange because it’s not the kind of singer that Dave would be reverent about.” And then I realized I had the wrong guy… So I went to the store and bought about twenty Tom Waits albums and (one of them was Mule Variations), and I remember that I was listening to all these records, getting three tracks in and literally throwing them away. Then I put Mule Variations on and stopped dead in my tracks. It completely leveled me and I can say – out of everybody I’ve talked about – Tom Waits is my favorite artist now. I completely resonate deeply with his music, his voice and his lyrics; I buy everything he ever does. He’s one of those guys who are totally at one with the creative element with no excuses or concerns about what’s going on around him – totally uncompromising.A lot of people think they’re uncompromising, but they’re not…"

"This was on the soundtrack of Luke Cage, which me and my missus watched quite a lot, it’s a cool series and there’s great music on that show. I first heard this track years ago, but when I heard it again on Luke Cage it reminded me to go and root out the record. “It’s a beautiful snippet of a sort of souly… actually ‘souly’ is the wrong word, I don’t like the word souly, it gives me the wrong image! It’s a beautiful little instrumental moment with these wonderful female vocals doing their thing, they’re almost like Disney vocals. ‘Cristo Redentor’ is a really cool bit of music, I hear something like this and I get inspired and think ‘I want to have a female vocal that does that kind of thing’ or ‘I want that air and space to the bass guitar’, where it sounds like it’s not just DI’ed in but it’s got this roominess to it. It’s quite often sonic things that I hear; where I’ll hear something and think it’s right up my street sonically or it’s the combination of instruments. “There’s such a great tone and vibe to this. I was listening to stuff like this when I was making the record, these sort of moments, like how Hip Hop uses old moments from soul records, that kind of approach. I think production-wise a lot of that stuff is amazing, there’s instruments like glockenspiels and it’s quite orchestral but with this great undertone - it’s different, there’s a dirty rawness about it."

"The more I read about the Tropicalia movement, the more it influenced me. I admired the way they worked against a military dictatorship. The official artists, playwrights and poets got together and put on full-on shows rather than just play gigs. They'd put on theatrical events with a theme or have a provocative backdrop that would get them arrested! It's a portal into so many worlds, like when Rogério Duprat had been studying with Stockhausen in Germany and bringing this back to Brazil, Can would also have influenced him in Germany and maybe someone like Cornelius Cardew who was like a British outpost. There's an amazing story about Cardew touring when he eventually turned against Stockhausen and wanted to bring his music to the people. He decided to tour the Isle of Anglesey in 1970 with the Scratch Orchestra and he got kids throwing stones at him during his gigs. Anyway, they ended up recording a few records in Brazil and this is one I play quite a lot, especially a song called 'Relance'. It's a few years after the Tropicalia explosion but Costa comes across really powerfully; it's like the artwork almost points to the Slits artwork but a few years beforehand. She comes across like a really powerful personality and there's a really unusual musicality on the record. This song ['Relance'] has a really heavy rhythm but it's driven by an accordion, which I usually find really off-putting but it seems to make sense here."

"I was an obsessive Echo & The Bunnymen fan, Crocodiles and Heaven Up Here especially, so when Themes For Grind came out... this might be a little creepy, but I was in a record store at the time, I was flat broke, and my girlfriend came from a really wealthy family, so I sort of talked her into buying it, knowing she pretty well wouldn't like it. I think she was a freshman at college at the time, and I remember being in her dorm room and listening to it over and over. I still maintain it's one of the most beautiful records. I don't know anyone else who has ever heard this record. I bumped into Will Sergeant at an art opening and introduced myself and told him how much I love Themes For Grind and he looked at me kind of confused, and said 'how have you even heard this, no-one has heard this record!' I have the vinyl of it somewhere but I couldn't find it online to buy so he very kindly sent me a Dropbox version of the album. My girlfriend eventually got into it. Even though it's very experimental, it's really beautiful. All the sounds on it are very odd and idosyncratic, but it's also got a really wonderful sense of atmosphere and melody. Boy, if I could be an evangelist for one record that people hadn't heard it'd be this one... but I don't even know how you'd get to hear it. Unless you email Will Sergeant."