"I love Louis Malle’s films because he’s always inventive in his own way. He’s not trying to be anybody else or copy any kind of fashion; he’s trying to give us something he believes in. In The Fire Within you feel this French, fifties-sixties kind of atmosphere: there’s always piano music by Satie and this feeling of desire for something grander, more powerful, more passionate. I felt that way as a teenager and a younger adult, always thinking life was never as intense as I wished it could be."

"Number four would be a movie called The Piano Teacher by Michael Haneke. That’s a really interesting character study to me, and that is my other favorite on-screen performance, Isabelle Huppert. I just think it’s a really, really interesting character study; again, disturbing. I guess there’s a theme here. [laughs] And her last frame of acting in that movie — not actually the last frame; the last frame is her walking, but the one before that is the best piece of acting I’ve ever seen in my entire life. If you don’t know what I’m talking about you have to go watch it."

"A true diva and genius, of course. This is one the best autobiographies I've ever read, recounting Simone’s upbringing in North Carolina in a non-segregated community; her schooling as a child prodigy by a Russian grand dame piano teacher; playing rough bars in evening dress and telling the winos to shut up or she wouldn't play (and they did!); to the absolute shock when she didn't get into Juilliard because of her color. By the time she's describing writing “Mississippi Goddam,” all my hairs were standing on end! A powerful woman, powerful activist, and amazing musician."

"This reminds me of the time I went through a big Miles Davis phase. Talk about going into different worlds with an artist – he did that every time, from Kind Of Blue and Porgy and Bess onwards, anyway. This album's still the one I return to, from 1969, and the band is phenomenal. You've got Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea on electric piano, Wayne Shorter on soprano saxophone, John McLaughlin on guitar. This is truly cosmic music for me, or even music that feels like it's emerging from the cosmos. As it plays, you feel like you're coming up with the sunshine."

"I've been a fan of his since the start, when I heard ‘Didgeridoo'... At our age it was an interesting time, because it was the start of dance culture as we know it, but also I was young enough when I first heard it that I didn't differentiate between hearing a Mary Chain song or hearing an Orb song or a KLF song or a Loop song. I guess of all the bands or musicians that I heard around that first wave of electronic music, I think Richard James is the guy that's continued and kept a high standard and evolved what he did. I mean, that Richard D James record, if you went and listened to half of the brand new IDM vomit they'd be shitty copies of that. What makes his music is so special is that as well as being amazing at concocting interesting sounds and rhythms, he's also musically always doing something brilliant. The piano songs on the Drukqs album are unbelievable. Talking about that, it's completely irrelevant to this, but the most annoyed I've ever got at a music review is the review of Drukqs in Uncut where the journalist said there's no point in making solo piano music because you'd never do anything as good as Satie or Chopin. Well let's just fucking go home then! But anyway. To be able to marry the playfulness with the beauty and the melancholic element, that's just incredible."

"He was the great innovator and the forerunner to make black music ‘acceptable’ to the general white population of America, and the world. When he came out, you just couldn’t ignore the impact of his voice and delivery of music with piano and arrangements. Putting him and Little Richard together, they’re kind of similar in a way because they had such a big influence. But I can’t ignore the contribution that Ray Charles has made to soul and music at large. If there’s one person that I could emulate with my voice, it would be Ray Charles, perhaps with a little bit of Nina Simone thrown in. I never saw myself as a white boy singer."