"An almost perfect album. Apart from one mistake – there's a joke song on it. I think jokes should never be on records, they just don't last. The record is such an incredibly serious record, it's one of the most grown-up records ever made in that the things she's talking about and thinking about are such serious and complicated emotional situations. It's one of the only records where I actually care about the lyrics. I really listen to the lyrics and think about what she's trying to say. I've always said that country music is grown-up and she came more out of country than out of pop. Whereas pop is always about the problems of adolescence really, hooking up with someone and whether she really likes you or not, when you get to country music it's about mortgages and divorce and things like that [laughs]. It seems to me to be about real-life, grown-up issues and so seems much more interesting to me lyrically."

"It's an overlooked record I think. They were in the midst of breaking up. They were writing separately, and here you can really tell the differences between the Lennon–McCartney and George Harrison songs. What I find really interesting about the record is how it's not really polished. 'Glass Onion' is as unique a song as I've ever heard, and with self-reference: 'I told you about Strawberry Fields', 'the walrus was Paul'; I mean all that stuff! It refers to things the fans were talking about. It's a spectacular album. It doesn't connect like Abbey Road or Let It Be anywhere near as fast because the songs are all over the place. In the days when album covers and packaging meant so much, it was just a brave statement to say it doesn't have a title and leave it white. There is no title anywhere on the record, that's fantastic! Just the solo photos of the band inside. It's a strange record."

"I think that's why I chose Hunky Dory. And you know why? I don't think there were that many hits on it that were the same. Well there were hits, but it wasn't Ziggy Stardust and well, you know that song, 'Kooks'? It might be because of that song. It's one of the sweetest songs I've heard and I don't understand why more people don't sing it. It's so beautiful. It's a really calm, sweet side of him. I love him so much. I feel strong feelings about him. Also I think some of it is really badass. My friend and I were talking about our favourite Bowie records once, and he said Hunky Dory and so I went back and listened to it and I was like, “Oh my god, he's so right”. It's so soft and it's so gentle and singer-songwritery and I like that about it, as it's more about his skill, than about the image. Man, 2016 was a bitch."

"The way their styles went back and forth was some sick street shit. Their beats were ill and they had like a slur, a slang style going on that resonated with so many people on the street. When I first heard 'You're A Customer' I was hooked; every single record was so tight and so completely banging. I think they had four or five gold records in a straight row which was such an incredible achievement. They were on some ill roll that just continued. They also listened to the dopest shit too and you could tell that from listening to their music. As well as being influenced by so much themselves, they influenced a lot of people too. Bands like us, Public Enemy, Run-D.M.C were just talking about EPMD so much. Back then, you had to make music that sounded real because if you didn't, people just saw straight through that shit. Most motherfuckers didn't make it but then artists like EPMD showed you how."

"This was a really important movie for me as a teenager. It was a movie I could have fun with, that I thought was a piece of art and that I thought was doing something modern that had to do with my life. Cinema until then, the ones I really appreciated were done by guys that lived in a different reality from mine and were talking about something in the past that had connections with what I was living but I would have to make an effort to be part of the story and make it work for my reality. With the Coen brothers I thought I was looking at something which was an idea from the day before, you know, and also the commitment they had to their point of view was amazing. I felt excited and it was the perfect film to fall in love with when I was young."

"I, as a child, loved Mary Poppins. Something about these misunderstood kids who couldn’t catch a break, and this fantastic woman coming into their life and showing them this other world, and yet also being so coy: “I don’t know what you’re talking about. What world do you mean?” I just really liked escapism as a child, I guess. The time element of Britain in another era, and then this fantastical element of going into pictures and cartoons and flying and laughing. It’s like it was so exciting to me, even though it came out 30 years before I was born. Something like that. It was a real go-to as a kid. In the last two and a half decades, it still works. It doesn’t drag. It’s still like the magic is still there. Whereas maybe other films from that era may or may not have aged quite as gracefully as Mary Poppins has."

"Now that we're talking about it, I realise that a lot of these albums are trying to merge those two worlds: the classical or jazz aesthetic with the trashy, rock & roll, electric kind of thing. Obviously PJ Harvey would normally fall on that rock & roll/indie rock side of things but this album is different from all her other albums. It's a real step between those two worlds. It feels really ghostly. It's funny because I was obsessed with this album for a long time, and I didn't listen to it again for ages. Then I started listening to it again earlier this year and I've become obsessed with it again with the same intensity as before. It's just so incredibly evocative of colours and textures and sounds. It's just so delicate but heavy as well. She hasn't been explicit on the meanings of the song from this album but I know that the subject matter is extremely dark."

"We’re often talking about ParaNorman as being John Hughes meets John Carpenter, and that was intentional. It was to try and tell a spooky story that was almost… you know, we talked about it like being directed by Sam Raimi as well. It was to try and combine all those elements: All the angst of a movie set in high school, where your issues are more about, you know, being bullied by the kid who lives down the lane, but to couple that with a movie about the more fictional horrors of monsters. I like that play. They’re actually a really good marriage. I’ve talked about ParaNorman being the characters from The Breakfast Club dropped into the plot of The Fog — and The Fog, I would say, would be one of the other influential ones. Right from day one of writing, I think. I love that movie, as bad as it is…"

"I think I first heard it when it was in my parents’ record collection and there was a point where I’d learnt how to put a record on, I must have been about 8. At that point you’re going through the records and judging them by their covers and Innervisions has got this really engaging cover. I got really into Stevie Wonder when I was 16. My taste in music at that age was kind of mirroring my sister’s, but I remember lots of her friends and lots of us were listening to Stevie Wonder like it was a new discovery. We listened to Talking Book, Fulfillingness’ First Finale, Innvervisions and Music Of My Mind which I can’t believe were all made around the same time, this insane output. Now if I don’t know what I want to listen to, I’ll put on Stevie Wonder. It’s a simple, satisfying conclusion to that question."