"I am a huge Roxy Music fan! I was the president of the Roxy Music fanclub in Madison, Wisconsin, which only had about seven members. We used to have Roxy Music nights, once a month, we would play their albums, all the different members' solo albums, and the live bootlegs. I love all their albums but I think for me Country Life was kind of their most consistent and most focused one. You really start to hear some of the sophistication that Bryan Ferry would later bring to Roxy Music. The first couple of records had a lot of quirky artiness to them yet the songs were so well written and their arrangements are spot on. There are so many great songs on Country Life including the opener, 'The Thrill Of It All', which is just epic. I love 'Out Of The Blue' and 'Prairie Rose', and 'Casanova' – that’s like a dirty funk number. One of my inspirations as a drummer is Roxy Music. I love Paul Thomspon's drumming on all the records and I've always looked at him as an inspiration. At the time of release they covered the album with a brown wrapper as the artwork was deemed to be offensive - the cover has this beautiful slash trashy glam vibe to it and that kind of defines what I loved about Roxy Music."

"I was 16 or 17. I'd just started doing Art A Level at school, and this whole world suddenly just opened up. For ages, I'd been playing the flute, playing the saxophone and skateboarding. That was it really and then all of a sudden, I hit that age. My friend Adrian had a ridiculous record collection. He started making tapes for us, me and another friend of mine, and he introduced us to all that stuff: The Doors, The Velvet Underground, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix. I was getting really into art and really into poetry. I discovered Picasso, Matisse, Magritte at the same time. I also discovered surrealism and surrealist poetry, literally in the same couple of years. It was like an explosion in my head. 
'Run Run Run' was just brilliant because it was so chaotic. I'd been into music for a while - I was really into The Police and various bits - but this was just so different. I just loved how nihilistic it was. Really dirty. Luckily my partner's a massive Velvet Underground fan as well, so we stick it on quite often, even now. I still get the same feeling from it when I listen to it now that I did that very first time. I still get that electric charge of energy from it."

"This reshaped music and the way I wanted to approach it. You wouldn't think it because it had been out 10 years when I got into it in 2003. I was working in this warehouse and this guy used to bring loads of hip hop in and stick it on. And after a while it's like, this is really good, you know. They didn't even rap on some tracks, it's just shouting. And all the martial arts stuff. The chaos of it and the intermissions of, ""Some blokes got shot round the corner, I'm not joking!"" It's really funny. I found I really connected to it because at the time I had no money. I was a bit of a shit-kicker. You got the impression that these were people at the end of their tether. Not in a good position. Just chaotic. It didn't adhere to this idea of hip hop, hippety hop. It made no sense as well, especially people like Ol' Dirty Bastard, I was just like, ""What the fuck are you on about?"" That really influenced me. I realised you could marry words that don't make sense. They gave across this humanist thing, they weren't just intimidating, or playing up to this image. I found that quite endearing. I like the dusty drum beat, the production is great."