"This would be the opposite to a lot of the records we've been talking about - it's complicated, there's a lot of instrumentation going on. That's one of the things I really like about Tortoise, they can play all that stuff live and pull it off. I think they have nine members sometimes, maybe even more, but it's one of those records where it's a really cool electronic record but it's actually really organic because these guys are really playing. Those two things are so different and so hard to blend well, I've tried it myself and failed often, it's hard to do. The musicianship needs to be there, and the programming needs to be right - I may be wrong but I think a lot of those type of songs are created electronically and then people try to interpret them, but with Tortoise I don't know how it starts - do they start organically and then interpret them electronically? Especially with Standards, it's a perfect blend of the two. I definitely feel an affinity with post rock groups like Tortoise, maybe people like Shellac as well."

"In the same way as I chose Al Green I chose this because they are the first real electric blues band, they are just magnificent: the songs are great, the singing's great, the arrangement's are great, the sound is great - they invented it, pretty much. I got really familiar with this round about '83, '84. I was breaking up with someone and breaking up with myself really. For about a year that was all I listened to, I put it on and it never disappointed me. It was after all the Wire work and all the Dome records and all the various things. I put that on and was absolutely sold. Things were up for grabs, I wasn't really sure about anything else really, but this seemed really pretty solid for me. Incredible. Talking of John Peel, the last time I saw him before he died, he came up to me and said: 'What was the most disappointing gig you ever went to of someone you really liked? For me it was Howlin' Wolf with a pick-up band and I wish I'd never gone.'"

"Jesus Christ, that album is just stupidly good! I didn't know this, but a lot - Ginger Baker, Tony Williams, who played drums for Miles Davis, Steve Vai - it was a supergroup! It's a perfect record, it's like the perfect, cool record. The guitars on it, it just sounds like it's flying! It's like, ""Wooo, there goes Steve!"" There'd be divebombs - he had a Floyd Rose whammy bar - it just tanks - it goes down and then it goes up, up into the stratosphere, and then he'd go really down on it. Jesus Christ - talking about sonics! And it's surprising how many of the drum riffs that I like are by Tony Williams: the first song ['F.F.F.'] on it is just awesome; I would've thought that was Ginger Baker. I guess the producer employed two jazzy drummers! I was listening to this pre-Pixies. I listened to it a lot with my brother, my little brother who's excellent with the guitar. I still lived at home at the time and we would just flip out in my bedroom. He would actually show me [how to play something], because I would be so frustrated: "Goddamn it! What is this?!""

"I saw Blue for the first time when I was in film school. I checked out a VHS tape from the library and watched it on a twelve-inch TV/VCR. The movie finished and I sat staring at the dark screen while the tape auto-rewound. When it reached the beginning, I pressed “Play” and watched it a second time. When it stopped the second time, I turned everything off, went to bed, and stared at the ceiling. A week or so later, I finished the trilogy and thought, If these are called movies, we need a new name for everything else. I’ve never seen music sewn through film so deeply, as if the actors were thinking the soundtrack while they were acting. However he did it, Kieślowski caught the chaos of being human without the mania (for instance, the elderly woman carefully disposing of recyclables). His films are life-affirming for the jaded—they are the smartest and sexiest of unintentionally philosophical films, never talking down or forgetting to entertain. And the ending of Red—well, isn’t that the ending of everything?"

"I saw Blue for the first time when I was in film school. I checked out a VHS tape from the library and watched it on a twelve-inch TV/VCR. The movie finished and I sat staring at the dark screen while the tape auto-rewound. When it reached the beginning, I pressed “Play” and watched it a second time. When it stopped the second time, I turned everything off, went to bed, and stared at the ceiling. A week or so later, I finished the trilogy and thought, If these are called movies, we need a new name for everything else. I’ve never seen music sewn through film so deeply, as if the actors were thinking the soundtrack while they were acting. However he did it, Kieślowski caught the chaos of being human without the mania (for instance, the elderly woman carefully disposing of recyclables). His films are life-affirming for the jaded—they are the smartest and sexiest of unintentionally philosophical films, never talking down or forgetting to entertain. And the ending of Red—well, isn’t that the ending of everything?"

"I saw Blue for the first time when I was in film school. I checked out a VHS tape from the library and watched it on a twelve-inch TV/VCR. The movie finished and I sat staring at the dark screen while the tape auto-rewound. When it reached the beginning, I pressed “Play” and watched it a second time. When it stopped the second time, I turned everything off, went to bed, and stared at the ceiling. A week or so later, I finished the trilogy and thought, If these are called movies, we need a new name for everything else. I’ve never seen music sewn through film so deeply, as if the actors were thinking the soundtrack while they were acting. However he did it, Kieślowski caught the chaos of being human without the mania (for instance, the elderly woman carefully disposing of recyclables). His films are life-affirming for the jaded—they are the smartest and sexiest of unintentionally philosophical films, never talking down or forgetting to entertain. And the ending of Red—well, isn’t that the ending of everything?"