"London Calling is probably my favourite rock record of all time. It’s incredibly powerful and diverse, it’s social, political and has all sorts of musical genres - punk, rock, ska, ballads, jazz and dub - rolled into the song arrangements. The Clash were at their peak when they made it and the kick-off track is the most anthemic song they ever wrote. It’s got everything, brilliant lyrics, a brilliant performance, it just sounds killer and Mick Jones’ guitar playing is phenomenal, when you hear that guitar riff it’s like a fire alarm going off. ‘London Calling’ is like a call to arms, it makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up every time I hear it, it’s that powerful. I went to see them on that tour at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago and it was absolutely rammed. The second they started playing the entire room started jumping up and down and I thought the building was going to collapse, you could feel the whole place shaking. It was an old theatre and I was watching from the balcony, thinking we should maybe get to a safer location but I became so immersed in the music I forgot about it, it was a fantastic show. There were obviously differences between the British and US punk bands and some of that is in the sound of the records. The British records had a bit of a darker sound to them and that could be due to technical stuff in the mastering, but a lot of it had to do with the performances. To me, the British bands have always been ground-breaking, as a whole there were better new wave and punk bands coming out of the UK than the US, it was like the second British invasion. There was a great scene in New York, The Ramones, Talking Heads, Television and Blondie were ground-breaking at the time, but England, a country with a much smaller population than the US, had a larger percentage of iconic bands from that era."

"She is a Turkish goddess. It is folk [music] in its essence, I suppose, but this record is fierce. She is angry and compelling and this record fires me up. It was when I was on tour with Gruff [Rhys] – maybe about eight years ago – and Andy Votel was with us and doing DJ sets and he was playing 'Ince Ince' from this record. I had become a bit lazy about discovering music and had become a bit fatigued at listening to new things. Suddenly Andy is playing music like Selda and it was so exciting. He opened a world of new music to me. I started listening to things by Iranian female musicians like Googoosh and also to Susan Christie's Paint A Lady album. It was all incredibly exciting music that I hadn't known about it. It was like opening Pandora's Box to me. I would play it to everyone I possibly could. I would constantly be saying, ""Have you heard this record by Selda? It's one of the best records I have ever heard"" and I would get it out and play it to anyone. It would always get the same reaction. I remember playing it to St Vincent when I was touring with her and she lost her shit when she heard it. I think she subsequently went on to cover one of the songs. Last year I was playing a show in Switzerland in this old cinema which was absolutely incredible. It had a huge disco ball and we were having a bit of a lock-in. We were having our own private disco in this cinema and I put a Selda track on and everybody just went absolutely apeshit. It is just a record that you cannot get fatigued by – I was listening to it this morning and got excited all over again. The synths and the electric sitars on it are so infectious – the album is like a musical virus. I recommend everyone listens to it."