"This is track two on Beck’s Morning Phase, his ninth studio record, which I discovered after touring Radlands around America three times. I’d always appreciated Beck from a distance, but I never had an emotional connection to his music. I loved “Loser” and it was fun to spin him at an indie disco, but I didn’t have that real relationship with his music. But when this came out it blew my mind; it was such an incredible record. “It was written and recorded as a counterpart to Sea Change, his previous record. It used a lot of the same musicians and it was recorded in Nashville. It has that real blissed out, opioid induced country music feel to it - very floaty. To me, it really felt like it was his mid-life crisis record, the musical version of him buying a Bugatti and running off with his secretary. “Just like with King Crimson and Cass McCombs, Beck’s Morning Phase completely influenced Curve of the Earth and it gave us the sonic blueprint for that record. The blueprint was this woozy, washed out, ethereal, very spacious, widescreen feel. There are tinges of country there, but it’s more of a headphone stoner record."

"I was obsessed with them when I was in The Edmund Fitzgerald, so much so that I'd try to get on every bill with them. They were the most incredible live band I'd ever seen and I couldn't for the life of me figure out why they didn't change the generation in Britain. They definitely changed a lot of things for me. When that record came out, not only did I love the sound of it but also that it kind of made it feel possible to make a record and put it out. What's becoming clear to me as I go through this list is that there's something to do with people's voices that connect directly. All of Charlottefield were incredible musicians but there was something so animalistic about Thomas [House]'s scream - both live and the way they captured it on the first record. It's just so raw, there's something about his scream in particular - I could never quite grasp what he was singing about or what he was singing, but there was something searing about that scream that made me wanna play guitar obsessively and play shows and get on bills with them and made me wanna lose myself in music even further than I had done at that point."

"This album was a statement – here we are, Deep Purple. I think it changed a lot of musicians and the way they looked at music, in the same way Zeppelin did. But this rang British bells. They had other great albums, but this was the first one I got into – it’s great from beginning to end. Before this line-up, with Ian Gillan, they weren’t so heavy, then they went funky with Glenn Hughes, because he was a big R&B singer, though David Coverdale’s singing was brilliant. Come Taste the Band was when it went truly funky, after Ritchie Blackmore left. We toured with Blackmore in Rainbow a few times – nice guy one minute, then the next he could be odd. Once, someone threw a lighter on stage and he walked off and went back to the hotel. Other times he would play all night. He was very moody. First time we played with them was Donnington but we didn’t have much to do with them. One time we toured with them we did two shows and went down really well and they kicked us off – we turned up at Wembley for the next show and the gates were closed and we were told to go home."

"This song was a whole other cool factor for me. There was something so cool about it - the sound of it, the synthesiser and what he was singing about. It made such an impression on me, and I’m in love with Benjamin Orr’s vocal performance, it’s incredible. “A lot of these songs are based on vocal performances and guys that I idolise as having a vocal quality, but I also loved the guitar solo. It was the first solo I ever learned to play and it’s a pretty bitchin’, advanced, badass solo. It’s one of the best, so I was pretty stoked about it, but don’t ask me to play it today! I also learnt a bunch of Squeeze solos, Glenn Tilbrook and Chris Difford are two more of my favourites and the solo on ""Pulling Mussels (from the Shell)” is unbelievable. “With “Just What I Needed” it’s the solo because I’m a guitar player, the sound of it because I’m an engineer and producer and the lyrics because I’m a songwriter. People who aren’t musicians might be surprised by these songs, but they’ve had a big effect on me. I picked these songs based on being pivotal and this was one of those songs for many reasons. I’m still trying to write that song."

"I've always love that type of extreme music. I think that Slayer sort of condensed the music coming from the thrash scene - whether it was Exodus or Testament or even the early Metallica - and made it into this sick, almost evil type of menacing [thing], which really put them on top of their game in terms of that style. 'Angel Of Death' is one of my all-time favourite Slayer tracks. It's just a great roaring cacophony, but there are some really strong hooks and melodies in there, which is really difficult to do with that type of music. They do it so well and I'm a massive fan. Later in their career they covered one of our songs, 'Dissident Aggressor', which was a big surprise. We had a great release a while back where bands were all covering Priest tracks, and a lot of our friends in the rock & roll world were willing to take part. It'd be great to do something like that, though, I think it's always a cool thing to do to show your ability as musicians and step out of your comfort zone. It's quite a good idea actually, bringing in some of that speed. Maybe the next release will have a sort of Priest-do-Slayer vibe."

"I found Devin when he was around seventeen years old and I needed a singer for my band. So when I heard tapes of him singing I thought there was really something there but the music he was playing was bizarre; it was really heavy and industrial and I thought, “It’s really good but I’m not supposed to like this because I like this…” But when he was working with me the poor guy was stuck under my thumb because my music is not a democracy, it’s a dictatorship. I want things a certain way. Devin wasn’t writing at that time but when he went off and did his own thing and when he did… I’m going to use the ‘G’ word here… I think he’s a genius, I really do. He’s so passionate, so intense and – at times – so tormented, but there’s this redeeming quality of deep, deep beauty about everything he does. I think that in the future when people evolve, if they go back and actually listen to musicians of the past, when it comes to metal, he should be number one. There’s stuff in his catalogue that nobody else would have the balls to venture into."

"When I was making this list, I kept questioning why I was choosing individual records. There are [other] records that influenced me as a kid but in this moment, when asked for this specific list, I was on tour and we were driving around America in a van, just the four of us in the band, the core of the Babelsberg record, the three musicians: Steve Black, Osian Gwynedd and Kliph Scurlock. Kliph has got a real high-resolution digital file player so he made a playlist that lasted a month. There were certain records we returned to as a group that chimed with us during these particular moments and one of them was this record. I like that Davis has dismissed the trumpet and taken up a synth instead - it's a good example of how to grow old radically rather than mellow out and it informed our tour so, if in doubt, we'd refer to this record live. It makes an interesting case for what works on a high-resolution file or what needs high-resolution [to sound as it should]. I might recommend this record now but if someone listens to it on Spotify, half of the quality of the performance might be shut out due to the frequencies [lost in encoding]."