"When I heard Elizabeth Fraser for the first time, first of all I was so excited that they were based in Scotland and hearing her sing felt like I was in touch with alien life [laughs]. I heard it and I didn't even understand what she was saying but I could feel what she's saying. It was so emotive and so extraordinary. I felt like every time I listened – and I still have the same reaction – when I listen to these records I feel like I'm literally being transported in angel wings. I find it euphoric to listen to and nobody's ever sounded like her before. She's totally unique and just this extraordinary talent. 
 Funnily enough, I once met her at a Nick Cave concert in Edinburgh. She was there and I was just so in awe of this incredible woman – I also loved that she was so shy and so unassuming. She wasn't really a front person, more of an instrument using her voice. 
 I'm not a religious person, but I always think it's like music from the Gods. It's not of this world. I want them played at my funeral. I always say that to my husband: 'Play the Cocteau Twins all the way through my funeral, that's all I want' [laughs]."

"This is a bit of a sidestep, but in 1987 I went to the States on a Camp America. Me and my mate applied and we got in and he went to work in this really posh Jewish camp in Massachusetts somewhere, with all these lovely kids. I was working with these underprivileged kids from The Bronx, in Carmel in upstate New York. These kids were rough. I was 18 and they were like 12 and some of them were bigger than me. I shared a cabin with a guy called Daryl who was from New York. He just played the Run–D.M.C. album all day. Bigger And Deffer was out then too, the LL Cool J album. I just loved it. That was when I got into hip-hop. I wasn't sold on the music. I always thought it was a bit lumpy, before Public Enemy came out. It was missing a groove really. But 'It's Tricky' is really uptempo. It's really aggressive, which I liked. It's got that 'My Sharona' riff and that's not going to send you wrong is it? It sounded great in the house. It sounded so alien. My mum and dad didn't want to know and when you're that age you want to be freaking out the straights."

"I guess I’d start with Blade Runner, which is a film I’ve watched many, many times, and bought many times on different formats, and seen in the cinema many times, and bought books about it and read about the making of it, and watched, you know, all the documentaries that I could get my hands on. I think why I like it is that it’s a film that so transports you to somewhere else. It’s not even just about the story, which is reasonably straightforward, it’s the texture of it — every frame of it, every grain of film, or every pixel on Blu-ray or what not, holds information. It’s so densely packed. You can watch it again and again and see different things in it all the time. That’s the genius of it. I think that period of Ridley Scott, with Alien and all his adverts around that point… I mean, it’s just never dated. If you watch something like Black Hole, which is kind of around the same period, and you look at it, Disney’s Black Hole looks like a films from the ’40s in comparison to Blade Runner. Blade Runner could be made today and it wouldn’t look any different." """

"To say anything is my favourite album is a bit of a lie because I change my mind from hour to hour, but if I had to choose a desert island album it would be this. I have such a personal sentimental attachment to it because I used to watch that film with my dad, and when he died there was a video cassette left and I watched it a lot. It got me into drawing, and the music is the first musical experience I ever had when I wanted to figure out a song. I was only 6 or 7 but I wanted to figure that music out. I think it made me always prefer minor chords and gloomier sounds. Watching that film, I remember feeling like it was almost magical and also terrifying. It's quite a violent film, and sexual, it was quite overwhelming. I was terrified and excited at the same time. It was the start of a burst of creativity for me, it started me drawing and the first drawings I did were always these alien landscapes – like most young boys. I started drawing and playing music all because of that album. It wasn't until years later that I realised that this amazing score was by this guy Alain Goraguer."