"Around 1983 or '84, pop music stopped doing it for me. It was getting a bit clean. There was still a lot of good stuff, but I think it was The Smiths... I wasn't obsessed with them the way Sice was and a few other people I knew, but listening to them made you want to find something else. Then, when The Jesus And Mary Chain came out that was it. My brother brought their second single home and I wasn't sure at first. It was such a racket. It still is. But it was 'You Trip Me Up' that really did it for me - I was sold. This beautiful marriage of... it's not nice feedback, controlled feedback like you'd get off The Who. It's awful. But the core of what's going on - the song - is so lovely. And they looked fantastic, like The Beatles in Hamburg. They looked like a gang. It just seemed like they were blowing everything away and starting again. I went to listen to the Velvets after I'd heard this, and the Velvets did it... it was either noise or it was a great melody. They never really did the two together, whereas the Mary Chain managed to marry the two. The video is just fantastic. They're walking around somewhere in the Mediterranean, sitting on the beach in full leather gear with their massive guitars. After hearing the Mary Chain, that was all I wanted to listen to - bands who did that. They were a big band. They were in Smash Hits, which is hard to believe."

"A friend of mine played me the Wu Tang album way before it came out. I was so entrenched and deep into this music shit by then that a lot of music was shared through people I knew and I would subsequently hear a lot of projects in their demo phase. I also got a lot of stuff from attending the underground mix shows: this was one such record. The Friday night mix shows were so special back in the day, especially in breaking new music – and what a record this was to break. It took me multiple listens to realise this was so radically different from anything I'd ever heard previously. Soon enough, I was like 'Yo, this shit is amazing.' Hearing nine different MCs with totally different styles meant that it took a little time for the Wu Tang to settle in: I admit I didn't get it the first time I heard it, but once the record came out and I started hearing it more and more, I knew this was something very special indeed. I had my favourite MCs in the group like everyone did, but as I started to get to know them more and more, I realised this was a group where at least six or seven of the nine MCs could just go off and be platinum selling artists in their own right. How many groups or collectives can you say that of? It wasn't even like a supergroup or something put together specially – these guys just came from the same sort of space as us and they were doing this incredible shit. RZA's production was phenomenal and I admired it so much, especially the concept of the slang, the Kung Fu…it was ridiculous. All the other philosophies behind it too were so special. For me, there was always something for everybody in that band because you have nine entirely different personalities in there and you're going to find something to like out of those nine motherfuckers [laughs]. Everybody had their favourites, me included. The first time I heard it, RZA and GZA were my favourites then as time went on, I liked Raekwon and Ghostface Killah. I saw them a couple of times live, like very early on before they really blew. Their gigs were just pure raw energy and the stage was chaotic and hectic because there's nine people on there with mics doing their own thing. They didn't have the most organised shows but there was this energy that they brought – this wild, fucking crazy ball of energy that they always delivered on the stage. You never really did know what was going to happen next and that was always exciting Ol Dirty Bastard was also one of the most unique characters ever in music. I always look for uniqueness and authenticity in an artist and he just had it in abundance for me. I heard him and thought, 'He's one of a one'. His music had a message of like, 'don't get stuck, free yourself'. It was a powerful message. I don't know if they can ever do something like this again or if something this special will ever exist once more: they had so much powerful energy. It's something very hard to hold together when everyone is going in a bunch of different directions, continually shifting. Yet they did it in that space and in that time: I doubt you can repeat that."

"When I first heard Led Zeppelin, I was a kid in kindergarten but my uncle and my mum used to pump Led Zeppelin loudly. I grew up with those mad eight-tracks and all the imagery in their songs hit my imagination hard. It was so hard to pick one record of theirs – I obviously couldn't pick them all but this is the one that came to my mind first and the one I think I heard and played the most. I also loved the album cover for this; I used to look at this record cover for hours and I'd never get bored. I got deeper into this record I think because I was hearing stories that if you played the record backwards, it said something. There were so many folklore stories around this album when I was a kid growing up and it was ripe for the imagination. Next thing when you're listening you'd see the fucking hermit from the tarot cards and you'd hear these stories that Jimmy Page bought Aleister Crowley's house and then next they'd suddenly be going to India and working with all these different musicians. All these wild stories, all the mysticism behind the band is what really sucked me in with Led Zeppelin. When this record came out, there was no internet and you didn't know if the stories were all true or not so they had this great mystery to them. There were a couple of television shows but I'd never seen Led Zeppelin on TV; there were no music videos back then either. Even magazine articles about them were short. There was a great mystery to them and it just left it all open to your imagination to make up its own shit and my imagination is wild. Their stage shows were also ridiculous and they completely revolutionised touring today. So many things they did inspired me, inspired Cypress Hill."