"Again, I've gone for the "pop" album - I've gone for the greatest hit. I thought about all his records and the minimalist composers, and I could have gone for a Terry Riley record or whatever, but there's a reason this is his hit. I could come back and listen to this any time. One of the greatest live music experiences of my life was when Steve Reich had his 70th birthday at the Barbican, and he came over with his musicians and did nearly all of his classic pieces. I saw Drumming and other stuff, and then I saw this at a little church across the street from the Barbican and it's so beautiful, so gorgeous. Really, really moving. Having said that, this year Kieran and I booked a trip of DJ gigs because we hadn't seen each other in a while, and we played the Snowbombing festival in Austria, which was hilarious. We were driving around, so we hired my friend who's this really placid Czech guy. He's the driver on all my tours and I've never seen him get agitated about anything ever. Most people who drive primarily for a living are prone to road rage, but I've never seen him lose it. So he asked us if we wanted to put on any music so on went Music For 18 Musicians. He's not really a music fan - if you put on Albert Ayler he'd be like, "Jesus Christ, what are you trying to do to me here?!" So we were driving through the Alps, I was chatting to him and Kieran and listening to this piece of music that I love. I didn't really notice but he'd gone silent and 40 minutes in he was like, "Um, excuse me, this music's driving me insane, can we please turn it off?" To me it's the opposite of that, it's the most soothing music possible, so I guess that illustrates that it's not for everyone."

"""When VU came out in 1985, everyone I knew had absorbed the official Velvets albums from the late 60s and early 70s, and had listened to all the bootlegs they could get their hands on. We had heard in the press mention of lost recordings and there were a couple of those songs on bootlegs that were hard to get. So, when this album came out it was like finding The Commandments 11 to 20. I almost didn't want to get my hopes up too much as it promised amazing things. When I did get it, I couldn't believe how good it was. It has a particularly important part in my life, in that The Smiths were already going at that point and we were a successful band. To be hit by something as a fan of music when you are already number one in the album charts yourself - I think Meat Is Murder had just come out at that point - was an utterly brilliant thing. It dropped into my life like a ton of inspiration. I was obsessed with it and, in particular, the versions of 'I Can't Stand It' and 'Foggy Notion'. I couldn't understand why that version of 'Ocean' hadn't come out before as it was easily the best one. I played 'I Can't Stand It' so many times that it stuck in my subconscious and that came out as the inspiration for the rhythm part on the song 'The Queen Is Dead'. So, the VU album was what I was listening to almost exclusively before I started writing the album The Queen Is Dead. The earlier Velvets albums are so revered that to better them is quite a feat. I have been in many an argument with people who think I am insane for preferring this record. When you take away the reverence for the early albums - which are undeniably incredibly important - VU is my favourite listen."""

"Now to get as far away from punk as you can get… Wynton Marsalis is a trumpet player, and Kathleen Battle is a soprano. “There’s a really good video of them performing this song and it kind of tells you everything you need to know about them as people. The combined ego of these two people is insane, you can see it on their faces. Again, it goes back to the idea that you don’t need to feel like you like the people singing to like the song, you can get positive emotions from egotistical people. “This song was played to me by Rachel from Cat’s Eyes. I got into classical music through her and it took me ages to a find soprano that I actually liked. I find listening to sopranos difficult sometimes, sometimes it feels so intrusive with that theatrical, over the top warble. But when the tone is pure I love it and Kathleen Battle is one of those sopranos. “The song is a baroque piece, but I find it quite hard to categorise. It’s so visual and so evocative; it’s almost psychedelic, because their music affects your perception of things. And it puts so many opulent and indulgent pictures in my head while I’m listening to it. Of all the soprano pieces and classical pieces that Rachel played me, this one is my favourite. I listen to it all the time, it’s probably one of my most listened to songs. “These two performers are so completely dedicated to their craft. They’ve been doing this their whole life and they’ve reached a level of control that most people will never get near. That’s why I love watching the video of it so much, despite their monumental egos you can’t help but admire and be inspired by the performance. The level of dedication and the level of musicality is unreal"

"Pacino in Scarface. That’s another one, just because it was where I was from. I am half Cuban American. That wasn’t the story necessarily of Cuban Americans but I know a lot of the guys that I grew up with and a lot of the people I grew up with felt that way. Being first generation — you know people had a lot to prove. And God, I feel that movie is so sleek, and very much what Miami is. It was really cool. It was a really interesting time when the Mariel boatlift happened and Castro emptying out his prisons and insane asylums. It was a crazy time. I think crime went up by 200 percent in Miami. I mean, literally we had killers on the street and it was a f—ing nutty time. I remember somebody saying that it’s funny that I ended up doing comedy, and I was so into all these other super hardcore dramatic films. But I just remember Al Pacino doing an interview once and him saying that he was — while he was doing that — he kinda really dropped into the role and became this really kind of vicious guy to play Tony Montana. And he said he was coming out of his house one day, and I guess some guy’s doberman had gotten loose and he was kind of “in it” on his way to work — and this doberman came up to him and he realized the doberman was going to attack. And he just kind of planted himself — you know, all Tony Montana — and just f—ing was like “Hey!” And the dog kinda turned around and whimpered and ran away [laughing]. And he was like, “Me, Al Pacino — I would have freaked out but I was just in this thing and I was really in — and this dog comes in… ‘This guy’s f—ing danger, you know? Stay away.'”"