"The first song I heard of theirs was called 'Funky' and the B-side of this was a song called 'Mentally Mad'. I was just listening to a mix show of theirs one night and they played all this new shit. I was like: 'Who the fuck is this?' I needed to know everything about this group from there; I knew this shit was ill. I discovered that they were from the Bronx and the more I listened, the more I realised that their beats were hard as fuck. I started reaching around and I found the 12"" single before the album came out and a few other songs. When the album eventually came out I was just mesmerised, especially with Kool Keith and his high-pitched rhymes talking about all this space-age, futuristic shit. It influenced me massively in that it was just this mad, unorthodox music and when I started making music, mine was very unorthodox as well. They were talking spaceship shit, like it was from another planet and they were 'Hardcore Bronx' fools too. The beats were banging with a big old bass and it just felt like some next level shit. It was hard as fuck, street shit set against these incredible lyrics – you just did not hear people talking like that. Kool Keith would rhyme but he'd also do this shit where nothing at all rhymed (like 'Mentally Mad') and that was very different at the time. They came just before Doctor Octagon and I never got into them or none of that as it felt watered down. Ultramagnetic MC's were just pure hood shit and they stood out because of it. Critical Beatdown was just incredible with the music and the beats they used. There's something too about having the contrast of the deep voice and the high pitched voice that's kind of like B-Real or Chuck D and Flava Flav. When one goes away, the other comes in and they switch again: when they come back, it's always more powerful too. They created a really dynamic sound."

"Like lots of people my age, Radiohead were a big band before Kid A. The Bends were where I really got into them, and then OK Computer really blew me away. But then Kid A came out and it was nothing like their other stuff. They took away all their guitars. They were the kings of guitars and they took them all away, and they replaced it with really out of tune, quiet synths and little drum machines and it made me and all my friends really surprised. We didn't know what this meant because we were so used to guitars being important, and then Radiohead came along and said you don't need any of that stuff, screw it. That really changed my attitude. Radiohead showed a generation that you don't need to be afraid of change. I just think it was such a brave decision, considering where they were in their career, what they had come from and what they had become well known for. They threw it all out the window and that inspired a huge amount of people I think, and it inspires us every time with think of it, or whenever we talk about turning our attention to a new album, we always have it in the back of our minds that we could ""pull a Kid A"", we could pull a U-turn, and that comes down to the fact that they were willing to do that, it was inspiring. Obviously loads of musical stuff came out of Kid A. The way Thom Yorke sings is pretty indelibly put into me, and a lot of the way the band play, and everything Jonny Greenwood does, influences us. It's what Kid A's attitude was really. It's really slapdash in the way it's recorded, it's really awkwardly mixed. It sounds like they've done it themselves out of old pieces of machinery that shouldn't work anymore. Gone are all the shiny, beautiful guitar tones and high production. Even his voice is beautiful and yet it's been corrupted and you can't really hear what he's saying, and he's singing falsetto. All the stuff that we kind of relied on them for all got chucked in the bin and that's just fucking awesome!"