"The thing about Beck was that he felt like a well-kept secret for a while. I can’t actually remember how I stumbled upon him, but it was way back around the time of his second album Stereopathetic Soulmanure, that was before he had his big breakout, crossover albums. This track is from Mellow Gold, which was his third album and had ‘Loser’ on it, so other people were starting to pick up on him, finally. I couldn’t believe that nobody else had heard of this amazing talent; he was completely doing his own thing and you could tell he had real soul. The fact that this was around the time of Britpop just made him stand out all the more to me, I couldn’t stop listening to his early stuff. ’Truckdrivin Neighbors Downstairs (Yellow Sweat)’ sums up what I loved about him in those days and why I still do now. It crystallised the appeal of those records, it’s got such an amazing narrative and it was obvious that it was a true story, that he really had lived above or below that truck driver who was on weird speed or angel dust. He just encapsulates that sort of nightmarishness of having problems with the neighbours and the pitched-down vocals make it sound totally ominous. There’s such an experimental flavour to it musically and lyrically and you can hear how he would cut and paste ideas. That’s how those early albums were - every track different to the last. I love everything he’s done really and that experimental flavour has never really left him, all the way up to making a pop record with Colors. I absolutely battered his first few albums though and for a while I felt like I was the only one. The guy’s a real one-off."

"I'd gotten into The Gentle Good after hearing his previous record, which was called Tethered For The Storm, which was lent to me by one of my neighbours back in Cardiff. That's how I switched onto him. I still love the accidental way you sometimes just get into music. He made this record when he took a trip to China because he'd become obsessed with the story of a Chinese poet called Li Bai. So Y Bardd Anfarwol is the immortal poet, basically; he has that west Walian edge to his music. He is a folk musician, even if I don't know if he'd like to be described as such, and this album has lots of Chinese musicians on it and it really is dealing with the myth and reality of this poet, and when he becomes a hermit. There's songs on there which are absolutely lovely. I like it when someone buys into a record; they jump into it, and they travel to another country, and they think: "I have to do this. I have to follow the path of this record." I'm not a great lover of world music - I'm not a great authority on it - but this was sometimes I could buy into; it was a smash-up which was enchanting. I love the fact he went from The Gathering Storm to this; it was a lovely seamless step that he made, and it's that kind of thing where I'm so entranced with this album, and it is a record that relaxes me, which is rare for me. I'm intrigued to see where he goes next, and that's lovely - it's the feeling you had when you're 15, and you go out and buy a third album from an artist and as soon as you finish digesting it you think, "God, I wonder what they're gonna do next." I kind of have that feeling with this guy."