"This is a film about a man’s rebirth. It was made in 1952 and is set in Japan’s postwar rebuilding period. Kanji Watanabe is a man trapped in the dreary bureaucracy of his job and life. When his doctor tells him that he has terminal cancer and a short time to live, he decides to change his life. He first tries going out on the town drinking in nightclubs and spending time with a young woman. This is a beautifully seen relationship that soon ends in disappointment. It is not until several poor women come into his office to complain about the terrible conditions in their slum neighborhood that he realizes how he can give his life meaning. In his quiet way, he uses the bureaucratic system he knows so well against itself. In the end he is able to establish a playground for the children of the slum. His selfless action in the last days of his life makes him a hero. At his funeral, his workmates try to claim the creation of the playground as theirs, but when the community show up to pay their respects, there is no doubt who acted for the greater good. For me, one of the most powerful and moving images in the film is the flashback during his wake. In this flashback, we see Kanji from behind, sitting on a swing in the snow in the middle of the playground. This film is about how fleeting life is and how important it is to be personally creative and to live every moment like it is your last."

"I liked the intro really, it was so inspiring. ""I'm forty-fifth generation Roman,"" where did he come up with that?! Hip hop is massive in Nottingham. There's a massive black community, it's a multicultural city and people just mingle, you know, and share ideas. People were not sure about this idea of a white guy rapping. Even white guys were not sure about it. He's not rapping really - well he is, but he isn't. But you couldn't deny it really, it's all great. The second track, 'Has It Come To This', that kind of dubstep, garage thing. I never even listened to the second album. White people rapping, it needs to be done well. No offense to the guy, but I wouldn't view Professor Green as the same thing, it's more Americanised. Jake Bugg tried to do it on his last album and it just sounded terrible, what was he doing? I can understand him being inspired by stuff, but he needs to check himself. I liked the dry high street observations on this album, the stuff about eating a fry up in a greasy spoon. The stuff that would warm you to him straight away - fried tomatoes, scrambled eggs. That conversation he has with his dad: ""Hold it down son…"" We all do it, ""No, I'm going to be alright, it will work out."" I listened to this when it came out. I was still doing folky and acoustic stuff at this time, it wasn't very good. It took years for me to think about doing something like this. For a long time I thought it was out of my reach, I thought I couldn't do it."

"I did an Apple iTunes show at the Roundhouse, and they asked me 'if you could have anybody in the world playing with you, who would it be?' And I said 'oh, Silver Apples'. I'd seen him play the Knitting Factory in New York, and I thought that if I asked him to play with me his response would be a resounding 'no', but he was really enthusiastic and happy to do it, he's just this cool guy with a nice hippy girlfriend. Everything about them, the fact that he invented his own equipment, and he did kind of single-handedly invent electronic dance music. You listen to 'Oscillations' and maybe someone would challenge me on this, but I think that's the moment when... before that, electronic dance music didn't exist. It's got the four on the floor kick, all the different synth textures, even the subject matter, singing about technology. That's techno in 1968. Silver Apples came out of that Lower Manhattan performance art scene, starting as them playing music for artists on LSD dancing in lofts. There's one song that they've done that I've always wanted to cover, the song 'I Have Known Love', and every couple of years I go back to it and try and cover it, but every version I've tried to do of it is terrible. At some point in my life I want to try and find someone to do it with because it's a really beautiful song... Maybe I should just accept the fact that the original is perfect and it doesn't need to be covered."