"If I were to have one at the moment, I think Chris [Cummings, AKA Marker Stalling] is my favourite composer. There's a lot of depth; there are a lot of nooks and crannies and obscure pockets to dive into, not at first listen but with each repeat. The album reveals its beauty after many listens, and each time you listen more it's like, ah yes! It's another one of those records that you can listen to forever, whatever mood you're in. I remember last year I took a long road trip to France and I was meeting friends, so each time I would play it, and in whatever circumstances, the music would fit. In happy circumstances it was great, but on another occasion I remember a friend had lost their dad, and it was very soothing and healing. It's another album that holds a lot of magic and is forever comforting. If it's hot it freshens you up, if it's cold it warms you up! It's great. He wrote a song for my last album as well. I'm a big fan. And live it's extraordinary. His backing band is Batch: we just did a residency together, they're amazing. I was watching their video last night actually, a little live thing from a festival, and those guys are brilliant. I can't believe how great they are, in terms of being really good musicians with great songs and also the heart, how they play. They are very implied in what they play. A lot of musicians I've seen in the past are just going through the moves, there's no energetic involvement or heart in their playing. Technically it's probably quite good, but to me it's very boring. But with these guys, I remember seeing them and I thought they were so good, but part of me wanted to make fun of them, but I couldn't because there was so much heart in their playing that I could only love them. So when Chris comes to the UK or tours Europe usually Batch are his backing band, and it's brilliant. But there are usually only ten or twenty people watching them. Maybe now it's a little bit more, but it's like, come on people, this is really amazing! He's an amazing performer who's full of surprises. He's very warm and super funny and excellent: I can't recommend him enough."

"It's no more complicated than Spirit. It's interesting what happened after the war with music and arts… In Europe [during the war], arts and music were used to further ideals, that the artists and musicians didn't share. There were people forced to make state marches, forced to glorify ideals they didn't really hold true, and the power of bullying had its most epic day. Post that, the album saw everybody throwing all the rules out. In that period of experimentation, classical music went through a very interesting walk, and when it came back, it seized on a different kind of experimentation, all of western art became more generous, and the most generous music is the stuff that rewards the listener the most. And I haven't found the same heart in any record other than those last two Talk Talk albums. They need to be listened to loud and they need to be listened to over and over again. And I'm stunned every time. How they make me feel is because of the generosity of spirit, it's like weaving spiders' webs from scraps. So delicate, so precious, but not a note or tone is uneventful."

"This is my childhood in a nutshell. I grew up in a very instrumental house, full of musicians, and this was religious for us. Billy Cobham, Tony Williams, these were the pillars my dad raised us on. Total Eclipse, though… My dad had that album on vinyl, but me and my older brother we weren't allowed to touch the record player unless one of my parents were there. But my dad would go to work, and we would wait until he left and then we would put the record on. We would do all kinds of stupid stuff that kids do when they're playing vinyl; messing with the record, warping it, trying to scratch if it's hip hop, but we were really cautious not to literally put scratches in my dad's vinyl. We would listen to Billy Cobham, and my older brother was a drummer, so he was listening to this with a lot of intent. We were really young, and on that album the level of musicianship is absolutely amazing. It's one of those things that also inspired me to play my instrument the way I play."

"I spent the summer of 2002 in Los Angeles, interning for my uncle’s company. I rented a one-bedroom apartment with no furniture. Other than my inflatable mattress in the corner (which sprang a leak right away), it was just a big empty space. I had a suitcase, a guitar, and a laptop with me. I had no television and a superslow Internet connection, so watching DVDs on my laptop was my only source of entertainment. I happened to rent both of these films that summer, and they are still two of my favorites. The sloppiness and raw energy of The Harder They Come was so inspiring. Two-Lane Blacktop also had a great energy about it, but in a more deliberate, quiet way. Both films were convincing arguments for casting musicians as leads, regardless of their acting experience, which I have done several times and plan to continue doing. Most importantly, the films couldn’t be shaken. They crept into me and wouldn’t go away. My initial reaction to something is far less important to me than my feeling about it a month or a year later. These two are still with me."

"I spent the summer of 2002 in Los Angeles, interning for my uncle’s company. I rented a one-bedroom apartment with no furniture. Other than my inflatable mattress in the corner (which sprang a leak right away), it was just a big empty space. I had a suitcase, a guitar, and a laptop with me. I had no television and a superslow Internet connection, so watching DVDs on my laptop was my only source of entertainment. I happened to rent both of these films that summer, and they are still two of my favorites. The sloppiness and raw energy of The Harder They Come was so inspiring. Two-Lane Blacktop also had a great energy about it, but in a more deliberate, quiet way. Both films were convincing arguments for casting musicians as leads, regardless of their acting experience, which I have done several times and plan to continue doing. Most importantly, the films couldn’t be shaken. They crept into me and wouldn’t go away. My initial reaction to something is far less important to me than my feeling about it a month or a year later. These two are still with me."

"I don’t mean this in a derogatory way, but Graham Oliver and Steve Dawson of Saxon were into the bluesy bands - simple but with a lot of groove. But me and Paul Quinn were into more muso bands like Genesis and King Crimson. That was the type of stuff we played, with more jamming and improvisation. As a bass player and singer, my goal was to play like Chris Squire. I used to try and learn the songs – it took me about six months to learn ‘Roundabout’. I‘ve talked to Rick Wakeman about Yes, and he said Jon Anderson would structure melodies like I do it. They would sit in a room and arrange things around the vocals, and we do that because it gives me more freedom to write. I could listen to this all day. NWOBHM bands liked Yes because the musicianship was great - it moves away from blues feel to a jazz feel. A lot of these guys were university trained, but we learned from listening to music. We knew nothing about music theory or scales, but prog rock really made you better as musicians when you learned to play it. It seemed unattainable because it was so good."

"I think this is Steve's masterpiece. On my first day on foundation in Winchester, the tutor played everybody 'Piano Phase' and it was the first time I'd heard music like that. It completely blew my mind. The repetition; the shifting; the way those two pianos phased in and out with each other; it's an extraordinary piece of work. And he resolved that through a number of pieces and he came up with Music For 18 Musicians, which was the first large scored piece he'd done. I went to India in the early 80s and I had a very small number of cassettes with me that I could listen to, and that was one of them. I remember sitting on a roof somewhere listening to that and looking up at the sky. It is a kind of cosmic record in a way. I don't know if you have to like Steve Reich to know what that is, in a way. If someone was coming to it and they didn't know that music I don't know what they'd make of it. If you're used to listening to tunes would you just wonder where the tune is? It's all about harmony and rhythm, but it's intensely beautiful."