"This era of the Velvet Underground is possibly, along with Ray Davies, my favourite kind of singing. It’s sort of weedy and again without testosterone and certainly without force, it was just very, very hip and not trying too hard. It’s interesting, because did a band ever sound as hip, not trying, but still delivering? “Velvet Underground were a real staple of my generation, in that a bunch of kids in the mid-70s’ discovered them retrospectively, probably in a way that I’d imagine kids now discover The Smiths. They sounded genuinely subversive without being obscure, they were real, proper songs and there was a great poetry in there. “Often when you talk about songs to people, most people assume you’re talking about the words - to a lot of people that’s what a song is. But because I got so obsessed so young with the mechanics of the music, the production and how things came together, often I wasn’t really too bothered if the words didn’t make much sense. I’ve had amazing experiences with songs that had words that absolutely didn’t make any sense, like ‘Jeepster’. “‘Foggy Notion’ is a really good example of a song that’s just really rocking - the guitar is really hyped up and swings like crazy - that makes you feel really good and absolutely doesn’t need any serious lyrical content. In fact, sometimes - and I suspect it’s the case with ‘Foggy Notion’ because I know it so well - if the lyrics were snagging your attention too much it would distract from what it’s supposed to do. You’ve got to remember it was for young people in the 60s’ to Frug to, doing these dance moves in cool striped-shirts and cool shades and ‘Foggy Notion’ is all about that and the sound of the voice. I think that’s a great thing and something people who think songs are entirely about meaning and words aren’t aware of. “It’s an interesting thing with The Velvet Underground, because if you imagine The Rolling Stones back then, who were supposedly the baddest of the bad boys and The Beatles who were supposed to be the hippest and most worldly, I wonder what they made of The Velvets at the time or if they’d heard them. I know Dylan was aware of them, but writing songs like ‘Heroin’ and ‘The Black Angel's Death Song’, I wonder if you were in The Beatles or The Stones you were just going ‘Oh no, we’re so X-Factor.’"

"My friend Tony recommended Jolie Holland. I'd never heard it. He heard it through his girlfriend, and he said, ""This has been made in a bedroom and it's beautiful."" She even coughs in the middle of a song, she does: ""All the morning birds"", she hits a beautiful, fluty high note and then clears her throat and she just left that recording the way it was. I was so into it, much like the Chet Baker record. It's just a singular mood. You put the whole album on and drift off into her world for a bit with her. And it is literally a bedroom musing. And then I found out it was one of Tom Waits's favourite records. That was validation to my opinion, and I just loved it. Then when I came to making my solo record, very nervous but on a whim, I contacted Jolie and said: ""There is no one on earth I'd rather do a duet with, and I know you don't know me from Adam, but any chance?"" And she got back and she said, ""I'd love too"", and we recorded 'Electricity' together, which was great. We were both conducting transatlantic love affairs at the time, and I'm obsessed with the transatlantic phone cable, what it took to lay it. It's 3,000 miles, it's 10-feet thick cable, and every time it snapped they had to start again. The way they did it, it was steamships in those days, so paddle steamers in effect. Two steamers met mid-Atlantic and circled each other, while attaching their halves of the cable together. And then took off in different directions, that's how it happened. And there was a huge fuss when it was connected. Everybody celebrating. Imagine the money involved in the endeavour, because every time it snapped that it, you've lost the cable, you've got to start again. When it arrived in New York and in England, of course both sides celebrating wildly; in actual fact, it stopped working after a couple of days. These endeavours were fresh in my head at the time, so Jolie and I wrote a song called 'Electricity', which is about precisely that, conducting a love affair transatlantically. My favourite bit being I said to her at one point: ""What haven't we said that you always say on a long-distance phone call?"" And she said, ""'What are you wearing?'"" And I said, it's got to go in, but you're singing it [laughs]."

"That one was quite deep for me because again, growing up in church and being a believer; my family being from the West Indies - my mum’s side from Jamaica, my dad’s side from Dominica - I remember going to church and it was authentic West Indians there in their 40s, 50s that now live in the UK but have kept these traditions, they were singing these songs just without the drums. So when I first heard this, something just went - ‘Hang on?’ I remember being four and hearing this person sing that song but swap Selassie for this or that. It had that same spiritual element I was so used to, just in a very different form. It was like a weird full circle thing for me. It was almost like going back home. These drums are taking me somewhere, but also I'm being carried by these songs I know. It was beautiful to check out more of what Count Ossie was doing and people that were part of his band like Cedric Brooks. He was infusing a lot of the jazz elements that he's hearing from Coltrane or Ornette Coleman. That's deep, you’re deep in the heels of Kingston, aware of Ornette and them man. Like Duke Ellington had to come and visit him, you know, there’s a photo of him and Duke Ellington in the bush. You know he's got something that's important, not only important for culture but it's spiritually important for the Nyabinghi tradition. For me when I heard that record, particularly Grounation, where they’re going through loops for 20 minutes, it’s that thing again with soundsystems where you ‘wheel up a riddim’ or at church when the tune would just keep going. It was something I’d never heard but I also felt like it wasn’t foreign, those experiences are so wicked and that influenced the whole fascination with drum culture and drum languages, spirituality connected to drums, music orientated around the drums. I got into Batá and music for the Orishas and things that are all over the Diaspora in West Africa, the Caribbean, South America. And when you listen to it, the recording’s so rags but it just couldn't work if you put it in Abbey Road. It gave me a bit more confidence when I was doing my record that if I go to someone’s house and I show up with a handheld recorder, as long as it feels right it doesn't matter. Big studio, small studio, my phone as long as it’s got that feeling that I was going for."