"I thought I don't like it as much as the one I mentioned before, and maybe I still don't, but then once I heard it in the 'phones again, there's something. Then I was listening to that one a lot in the car when I was driving around LA. It just opens your mind. It's undeniable music, untouchable music. Those three people, you just can't really touch them. If you were supposed to pick the greatest musician in the world, I suppose I would have to say John Coltrane. But they're all lumped together because obviously Alice Coltrane does things that John Coltrane can't; same with Pharoah Sanders, it's an extension of John Coltrane. They were put on this planet, they were special beings. I'd appreciated jazz since high school, I played in the jazz band. Then I got some jazz records and enjoyed them, for sure. Growing up, I think the Miles Davis later records hit me first, when I was a late teen, early twenties, Bitches Brew, the classics like Kind Of Blue, and then someone in Boston that I knew turned me on to In A Silent Way, which I really like, it had that Fender Rhodes on it and Chick Corea. But then I read the Miles Davis autobiography, circa 2004: that's like a lesson in jazz in a way, in his cocky way; he saw it all. I remember when I was in Boston, I bought this Thelonius Monk record, Underground, and there's a scatty song on there called 'In Walked Bud' and that always blew my mind. I got heavy back into jazz, and then back into Coltrane circa 2005, 06, 07, I just had some resurgence recently."

"This brilliant film about a boy’s coming of age introduced me to French cinema. Malle creates a fascinating picture of French family life; it’s both a comedy and a story of alienation. The mood of the more intimate scenes stays with me, as does the great jazz score."

"I bought this at university, mainly because of the cover art, I admit. I had a very small record collection then. You did in those days, and because you didn't have a lot, you'd play every record again and again. My dad, Tom, was a bandleader, so there was a lot of jazz in the house. He liked people like Count Basie and Woody Herman, but he stopped at Coltrane. He found the modernism of it difficult, but I loved it. It felt like a big thing for me, when I was a precocious teenager. The first jazz I had found for myself!

This is a real fork-in-the-road album for jazz, too, from 1958, a proper boundary between hard bop and the future. The three-part horn arrangements are something I tried to emulate on the first track of [Everything But The Girl's 1984 album] Each And Every One, too – in my own way of course. The album was only his second, and him early on as a session leader. There's so much life in it, and so many ideas. 
"

"I can't pronounce it either! It's a fantastic record. It's got such a gorgeous mellow vibe to it. It's kind of accessible to people who aren't familiar with jazz, but it also has kind of this free, loose thing. It's not free jazz, it's definitely modal. It's got Pharoah Sanders on it. It's lush and gorgeous and kind of takes you to a different place. Sometimes Alice Coltrane plays the harp, which sounds dreamy. It's one of my go-to's in the morning at work (in Sub Pop) I just kind of put it on to get me going. I probably drive some of my co-workers crazy playing it. You know, there's not a really obvious influence in our music that comes from jazz. I know I'm influenced by it, but I'm not sure how. I don't like all jazz, but certain things I love to death. That's the problem with this list: I can't stick Charles Mingus on it, or Andrew Hill, or Ornette Coleman, or Albert Ayler. One of the things I feel lucky about, my high school friends and I who formed Mr. Epp, we would go to our little record store in our suburban town and the guys there turned us onto The New York Dolls and Ornette Coleman and Ayler and The Velvet Underground, Brian Eno. I feel really lucky to have stumbled into that, at that time."

"Somebody gave it to me in the late nineties, just on a blank cassette and then yep, I was completely dubious, because when people mention Miles Davis or jazz in general, I would just think of those crazy funk-jazz things they did in the seventies, and I didn't know he was capable of this incredible orchestral soundscape. It helps that he's reading from an already fantastic piece of music but what he did to it was astonishing again, so I love it. It's just the most evocative record. Recently I had the pleasure of a train journey from Bilbao to Madrid and I put that on my headphones and it was like, "oh yeah, everything is cool". Actually, it didn't [unveil new layers to the record], as I think it was really cool to experience it on the train going through Spain and yet I always think that music is so powerful that the images that you have in your head if you're listening to it in your bedroom are as powerful, if not more so, than if you were in some incredible vista. After that I went back and bought the early Blue Note records, which are generally brilliant. I'm not a real jazz aficionado and if I've put on an old jazz record, it's mostly about mood, because I can't really understand what's going on. Whereas with Sketches Of Spain, it seems more orchestral, where I can understand what's going on better."

"I don’t quite understand how this film does what it does—make you understand the powerful, quasi-incestuous relationship between mother and son, without making it seem the least bit abnormal or reprehensible—but that’s what I love about it. That and the jazz soundtrack and the semipsychotic older twin brothers."

"My favorite movie is The Talented Mr. Ripley. “Tommy, Tommy, Tommy, Tommy — Tommy.” Philip Seymour Hoffman was crazy. Jude Law was just great. I don’t like what he did, but it was just the whole running-around-Europe-loving-jazz [thing]. That was very interesting to me. He didn’t want to do his father’s business. He just wanted to love jazz. He was free enough to do it and be content. I think Matt Damon was very interesting. Just to be so conniving and to steal identities and money. Jude Law was so naive for a while and then he realized Damon was a moocher. It was kind of weird how quickly someone could be deceived when they’re caught up in their own world."