"I didn’t really know about ABBA when I was growing up, they’re one of those bands you think you’d get into through your parents, but my parents didn’t listen to them. I think the first time I heard them properly was in Muriel’s Wedding, obviously that wasn’t a cool thing so they became a kind of guilty pleasure, but when Mamma Mia! came out in my late teens I was ‘Damn, all of these songs are so fucking good.’ “I have this list of songs in my head that I think are perfect, obviously that’s completely subjective, but they’re untouchable pop masterpieces like ‘God Only Knows’, ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’, ‘Waterloo Sunset’ and ABBA have so many of them. There’s a humanity in their songs but they also feel like ‘how could anyone have made something so perfect?’ The writing, the production, the arrangements, even the way their voices sound, it has the same effect as when siblings sing. Their voices are unbelievable, sometimes I think ‘is that a weird harmony?’ but it’s just the way their voices sound together, it’s incredible. “This song makes me well up because it’s so perfect, but it’s also so silly, it makes me want to throw my hands in the air, I want to dance when I hear it and I want to smile. You feel silly when you hear it, you feel camp and like a character in Muriel’s Wedding or Mamma Mia! when it comes on. It’s an amazing feeling and that is the power music isn’t it? “The other thing you have to remember is that one of the things that made The Beatles so amazing and such an interesting proposition and a reason why people really like The Velvet Underground as well, is because they changed the way songs were written, they rewrote the rulebook. Before then all music essentially sounded the same, everyone was using the same three or four chords and melodies, that kind of Rockabilly and Rock and Roll, all operating in the same framework, even the blues, The Stones and The Beach Boys, until they started breaking the rules too. But ABBA were making this music only ten or twenty years after pop music as we know it began to exist and it’s so innovative. “You know when people talk about their favourite bands? They’re a band who if you’re in a car, someone could put on an hour of ABBA and I’d like every song and there’s bands who I consider to be my favourite bands who I couldn’t say that about. It’s banger after banger, I guess it depends what mood you’re in, actually I was listening to them in a car the other day and someone told me to turn it off! “It’s mind-bending how good they are when they’re at their best. I think music is more often than not written about as art, but it’s also entertainment and whilst what they do is this incredible art it’s also so entertaining. It’s funny, we’ve been speaking about music for the last half an hour but this is the first time where we’ve talked about music making us happy and that’s really important. Music should make you happy and ‘Dancing Queen’ definitely does that."

"I remember first hearing 'Xtal' - that is the sexiest ambient electronic song for me. I remember being in my first year of university in Brighton and moving away from home and being a bit lost and lonely in some ways, in this tiny little halls of residence room. This album, Ambient Works, was just constantly on my Walkman and I'd been exploring Björk, The Black Dog, Aphex Twin and Boards Of Canada, all this electronic music, this world that was opening up to me from the early to mid-nineties, which I was discovering it a bit later. I'd actually at that point bought a QY-70, which is a Yamaha sequencer - I remember reading Björk had written Debut on it and Tricky had one. Listening to Ambient Works, for the first time it seemed possible that I understood how those things were layered up - beats and beautiful little melodies and there was no singing on it, which for me at the time was great because I was very shy about singing. I remember just hearing that and then going to my QY and hearing little synth sounds that sounded similar. Although Aphex Twin's synth sounds were, in hindsight, put through loads of pedals - I can hear that he's got field recordings layered on top of stuff and probably synths he's made himself - but it made sense to me and encouraged me to go and make my own ambient songs. I remember meeting Aphex Twin around that time at a Björk Vespertine concert. I'd met him once before and I went up to him with my MiniDisc player, which I used to put things I'd produced on, and I played him a song at the bar. I kind of knew him at the time a little bit by face, I think we'd met at some nights he was doing at a warehouse in London and me and my boyfriend at the time liked dancing and going out, and I played it to him and he said: ""I think it's really good. The production's quite good for a girl"". [laughs] That's what he said to me! I didn't take it as a bad thing. I was just like, ""cool"". I mean, Aphex Twin liked my production skills, so whether I'm a girl or not, it's fine. But I just remember thinking how funny that was - but I took it like ""that's a real stamp of approval for me"". I do think he's been a really pivotal figure and an important person in my life, because he does electronic music and it's really sexy and emotional. It wasn't cold like some of the other people, like Stockhausen, but I felt like he understood the dance movement and got the loved-up aspect to ambient music. There's a darkness to it, and a light, but a real twisted, disgustingness in what he does, like 'Come To Daddy' and 'Windowlicker', this rank Englishness, [adopts croaky drawl] ""come to daddddyyyy!"", all that weird shit. He's got a sense of humour and just seems to be one of the modern day composers of our time that understood emotionalism in electronic music. Dirty, disgustingness and kind of surreal, how to fuck with your mind, and his body of work is huge. So, yeah, I think he's a dude."