"Those Éthiopiques reissues were so amazing. This was the 21st one of those - it was a collection of some of her recordings. She was known as ""The Singing Nun"". The reissues introduced me to Ethiopian music. I'd never heard any before then, and I think that's probably true for most people. I was so bewitched by it. When I heard the Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou album I was totally blown away. The first thing I thought of when I heard it was Thelonious Monk. He was an obsession of mine when I was a piano-playing teenager. It also made me think of Debussy and Satie and stuff - the way the harmony just hangs there in suspension. Her playing - the manual element of it, like the way you can hear her fingers moving around the keyboard, reminds me of Monk and Mingus and those more idiosyncratic jazz musicians. It's so beautiful. This was the beginning of me thinking that Ethiopia was a really interesting culture that I knew absolutely nothing about. My wife and I moved to London into a little flat on Caledonian Road and there were lots of Ethiopian restaurants around there - it was a little hub for the Ethiopian community. Getenesh, the owner of this restaurant Kokeb, we were there so much that she took us in and adopted us. We still get phone calls from her if we haven't been there for a long time. I think it was the music and that, and right before Swim came out, my wife and I were basically not going to see each other for a year because I was going to be away so much, so we decided to go on a trip and do something special together. So we went to Ethiopia and I fell in love with this record all over again. It's such a distinctive place with a distinctive musical culture. When you're there all you hear is Ethiopian music. There's no Bieber or Western music. I thought the album was a totally undiscovered gem, a rare thing, but I heard two people that had my favourite track on the record as their ringtone! That blew me away. Imagine if somebody over here had Benjamin Britten on their phone. It gave me a sense of what a deep-rooted and proud musical culture it is."

"Trevor Nelson had a show on Radio 1 called Rhythm Nation, and every Thursday night he would play all this music that would literally become my musical education. Again, it helped me understand myself on a new level. I got introduced to the neo-soul era through him; a lot of the Philadelphia artists like Jill Scott, Musiq Soulchild, and D’Angelo. ""I just love D’Angelo. He’s a musical genius. His gentleness was something that really stood out to me, as did Lauryn Hill’s. It was a real subtlety to what he was doing – very considered in where the notes went, and what word was used. At the same time, it was then like a jam! He really nailed this sweet spot in between virtuoso and jamming. ""When I was in Glasgow, my first ever record deal was signed to this guy called Souljawn. He was a massive soul fan, and he said ‘Oh, I found this snippet online of D’Angelo’s new album!’ It was literally a two-minute, really scratchy clip of him singing this song, 'Real Love'. We’d all wondered where he’d gone, ‘cause it had been six years in between albums! We were up there in Glasgow obsessing over this two-minute clip, playing it over and over and over again! Like with 'My Love is Your Love' there was this want and need for music, and real appreciation of when it’s going to come. The willingness to wait for it – it had been six years and we were willing to wait another six ‘cause we just appreciated his genius so much! ""When his most recent album finally came out, the song was there, fully finished. It was so rewarding and satisfying to hear it all finished. To finally hear it now, and still love it… only D’Angelo! He’s incredible. ""I saw him at the Roundhouse recently and he really blew me away. He inspires me to learn more instruments, and to also just relax in music and allow more of an artistic spirit to come through – to not try and control things too much. It was really cool how he went offstage: each musician would slowly walk off and then he was left there, on his Rhodes piano. Playing piano is one thing, but playing a Wurlitzer or a Rhodes is a different, softer approach. He’s really inspired me to look into more of that jazz-soul realm on that instrument."

"Full disclosure - I'm a little biased. They're on DFA, they're my friends, and one of them is my boyfriend. But regardless of that I think it's a really beautiful record. The first record they did was great but I know that they were still trying to hone their sound, figure out what they were and what sort of stance to take. So with Dynamics I think it's way more solid and way more confident. Knowing them, they're such an interesting combination writing-wise because one of them, if it were up to him, would make a Tangerine Dream record, and the other has real pop sensibilities. So together they can make this thing that's really lush, beautiful and complex, but also accessible. I feel the album was overlooked somehow, and I don't really understand it. It makes me question my musical sensibility. I think this record is amazing so why doesn't everybody think this record is amazing? But it is. I listened to it a couple of months before it came out and at the time I was touring a lot as a DJ, spending a lot of time by myself because that's just what happens when you're a DJ that has to travel. So it was getting a little bleak. Every day I was in some other place, alone, inside of a hotel room, inside a club, on an aeroplane. But I had that record on my iPod and I would have to go running just to stop myself from throwing myself under a bus. I loved every song and each time I listened to it I'd try and pick my favourite track but as each one ended another one would start that I thought was better than the other. It's a mystery to me though, because it's not like I was the only person who loved it. All of our friends, the whole of DFA, whose musical tastes I trust over anybody else, we were all in agreement that it was a great record. I think maybe I just don't know what other people want to hear, which is an uncomfortable position to be in doing what I do. But I know that they're very proud of the record and so I'm glad for that."