"Jules Dassin’s gangster film about a robbery and its consequences is a French classic, noir before the word was in use to describe a certain kind of filmmaking. A word is in order here: I was educated in Switzerland, in an era when French-speaking people expected to see French films, so when we were allowed to go to the local cinema at Rolle or Gstaad, we mostly saw French films. British films, except for The Third Man, which is very “European” in tone, seldom played; still less big Hollywood ones. Rififi was a stunner, and an eye-opener, teaching us that French gangsters were a lot more interesting and attractive than our own mobsters, but just as tough, if not tougher. “Julie” Dassin was an American who moved to France, but he captured a whole, pungent slice of French life, and for months everyone at my school (le Rosey) went around trying to sound like Jean Servais, and to talk with a cigarette glued to their lips. Whole scenes from it still play in my fantasies."

"I know it's not cool to go with a soundtrack album but, if I'm honest, this is hugely influential. The film is so wrapped up with my teenage years; when I first saw it I was the same age as the main character and I was somewhat terrified of being somebody like that. To see someone who's so nerdy and yet full of himself is frightening at that age. You wonder, 'Do I do things like this?' You become so self-conscious at high school, you worry about what your peers think, you're terrified of looking weird, or being weird. Somehow the soundtrack represents those feelings. There's lots of British music on there, like the Faces' "Ooh La La" and "Making Time" by the Creation. I grew up in a very small town, so a lot of kids I went to school with mostly listened to rap and rock from the radio. But I did have a group of friends who appreciated films like Rushmore and music like this."

"I'd heard this record off and on over the years and I was more familiar with stuff like 'Bonnie And Clyde' but the thread through a lot of these records is that I look at the sonic value. And I've always loved Serge Gainsbourg's production, be it the bass sound or the drum sound and so I really don't give a shit that it's sung in French because that's part of the whole package. My brother and his wife bought me the vinyl version about five or six years ago and it reinvigorated it for me and it reignited how I felt about Serge. When you put that record on, whether it's making Sunday lunch or having a few smokes at the end of the night, it just delivers what I want at that moment and that's the thing about great records. You may not love them all the time but there are the times when you do. But this has got a really cool poise that I enjoy."

"This whole album Live Through This is probably my favourite record of all time, I feel so empowered by it. I love Courtney Love, she’s a very unique, kind of controversial character who’s very outspoken, who does wild, weird things and has that guttural voice. And it’s still pop, the melodies are very singable. “It got me through a horrible break up. I listened to the album on repeat and I was ‘I can get through this, because Courtney Love has gotten through some crazy shit.’ I was angry for a lot of reasons, relationship stuff, music industry stuff, and it became my armour or something. ‘Violet’ was the song on that record that first made me go ‘Whoa.’ “Sometimes I think ‘Miss World’ is my favourite but ‘Violet’ broke down the door of how to be a screaming woman, I learnt to scream and sing differently from that. She opened up that world of ‘fuck off everyone and fuck what anyone thinks of you, I don’t care.’"

"If you go back and listen to the early stuff they did, when they were The High Numbers, they weren't exactly a power band. [Pulls out phone again, shows photo of The Who playing a club in Chicago, presumably The Kinetic Playground, in August 1968] I had their singles, too. When I was still in high school I used to subscribe to Melody Maker and I got it by airmail - it was $105 in 1965. That was a lot of money. That's where I read about all this stuff. I'd see all the bands when they were playing clubs, which was the way to do it: you could really see how the bands worked. The sharp, 60s era of The Who is version I like best. A band I was in, The Grim Reapers, opened for The Who just before that photo was taken. They were just wild, the best live band I've ever seen. Hendrix was different: he was cool. Townshend was just exciting, even besides the smashing the guitars."

"If I was trying to be cool I’d say Bitches Brew, but this is the seminal album really, isn’t it? The great Coltrane’s on it. It was an astonishing band. It had such a tone to it. For a lot of music that I love, whether it’s dub reggae or electronics or classical or choral music, it’s about soundscape, it’s about tone. I can link the Burial album into Kind Of Blue. A few years ago somebody gave me a very high definition LaserDisc – it was next generation after LaserDisc. It was of Kind Of Blue and it had been remastered. It sounded like the sounds had separated off and they were no longer mashing together as was intended. And it sounded horrible and soulless. I just took it off and never played it again. This is real fusion of sound, though it’s not fusion jazz, and the sounds cross over each other and complement each other so beautifully. It’s the perfect soundscape. It’s another wardrobe in my head."

"In a weird way for me, same as Jeff Buckley, Count Ossie and Buju, this feels really churchy to me. It's quite an odd tune when you think about Jimi, the drumbeat is very meditative, the same way you get with Ossie and his repetitions. Lyrically it's not, man is on a lot of LSD but there’s something about it that I’ve always gone back to. I still can't really explain what it is, it's definitely linked in the same way. It’s got that sort of mysticism about it. And when you listen to that whole album, it’s like wait, what happened there? Everything else makes sense, but what's that? I love those kind of tracks. We know Jimi for this one thing and this is just like, somebody explain this? I wonder if he had to fight to get that record on the album because if I was an A&R I’d be like ‘Sick, but this doesn’t fit, maybe we should put that somewhere else.’ Whether it’s right or wrong I don’t know - but it's sick."

"I would have encountered it at the same time as O.M.D. and The Human League, but I wouldn't have liked it as much back then because I was a kid and Roxy Music were terribly sophisticated and grown-up. I love the kind of perfection of the music: every note is thought out, it's not a splurge, it's just "now the saxophone will do this" and the drums are terribly, ever so just how they ought to be. It's wonderful music, really beautifully produced. Also, 'Same Old Scene' is one of my favourite songs - it really bolts along in a way that I don't quite understand. I've never really got to the bottom of how it works, because it doesn't really have a four-on-the-floor, it doesn't have a shuffle-y thing, it just kind of happens and it's really exciting, and I don't want to know how it happens, because that would ruin it. The longer you do this job, the more you understand about how things are done. It ruins quite a lot of records!"