"Lyrically Dizzee Rascal is phenomenal, and musically he's one of the most progressive, forward thinking grime artists and musicians of our time. He won the Mercury Prize over ten years [before Skepta], which says it all. This record was what I listened to when I was commuting to and from Slough, when I was just starting Gallows, I was listening to it nonstop. I've loved grime since I was young, I've always loved hip hop but grime was so quintessentially British, you couldn't have made it anywhere else. To me grime is punk, more now than ever. Punk to me was the sound of disenfranchised youth, and that's what grime is. You take everything away from young people and tell them what they can't do, at some point they're going to say 'yes we can', and that's what's happening now. They feel discriminated against and now they're making the right fucking decisions by showing that. I think it's a classic record. What's really nice to see is that back when this arrived on the scene it was still very much about beef in the grime scene, people were still writing diss tracks, whereas what's happened recently is that when he played those tenth anniversary shows you just see everybody celebrating it, celebrating the fact that here's an album that did so much over a decade ago, and now we've just had a second [grime Mercury Prize winner]. I love that, but my problem is that there haven't been more. I love that these are being used as bookmarkers, as milestones, but we need a lot more than that, more progressive, forward thinking, unique individuals. That's what the Mercury Prize is supposed to be for, though it misses more than it hits."

"It's one of my favourite concept albums, one of my favourite psychedelic albums, one of my favourite albums from that period full stop. I don't really know what the story to it is, I've never really bothered to figure it out, I just think The Pretty Things are one of the coolest bands of all time. There's something so edgy about their take on British Brian Wilson-influenced music. I love Odessey and Oracle, and I love all the more famous concept albums, but there's something about S.F. Sorrow that feels so much more rock 'n' roll, there's something about the way that they play that feels like punk rock for its time. They just have a real cool edgy energy, but at the same time it's sophisticated and lush. Obviously there were a lot of different bands experimenting in England at that time, but this is special to me because it feels more glib and more flippant, and less precious. It's well thought through but it has a useful punk edge that puts them in another class. I think one of the first times I really got into this album and realised what a masterpiece it is was ten or eleven years ago when I first met my girlfriend Charlotte. We went up with a few friends to a farm in Pennsylvania. It was the first time Charlotte and I kissed, it was a very magical lost country weekend. I remember hearing this record a lot that weekend. I already knew about The Zombies' Odessey and Oracle and I was a huge Beach Boys fan, but I didn't realise that the Pretty Things had done something so complete. They were leading the way, they were ahead of their time and not just copying the others, they were setting the bar."

"I was a weekend punk. It has got to be in the top ten best albums ever. It's one of those records that your parents would hate so you loved it. The whole rebel thing was the main thing. 'Pretty Vacant', when I first heard that I thought bloody hell... Again, my best friend, he was into The Sex Pistols before I was, and this was one of the first bands that he switched me over to, I thought "Yeah, they're pretty good". [laughs] We weren't early punks or anything, we weren't on the crest of it. We were in Basildon, Essex, so we were two years too late. I could never make a record like that, I wouldn't know where to start, so I have admiration for people who can do that kind of stuff"

"I really like the Elton John thing. Axl was really into that kind of shit, and it really comes out in that tune. He gets a bit, 'Oh woah is me,' but you can't really fault the tune. It's got some great lines in it, he's got a great voice, and he's got a real ear for melody. it's not just punk rock and metal - he really can sing! He also made you feel like it must be quite shit to be a massive rock star, that it's not all it's cracked up to be, which I thought was good. He was one of the first people to say, 'look, I'm struggling with this.' Before Axl, people had been like, 'Hey! Everything's glitzy, everything is alright!"", and he wasn't like that. Then obviously Kurt Cobain took it to a whole new level."