1. Kate BushHounds Of Love

The first half is just an astonishing rundown, it’s almost like a greatest hits. This record, and Kate Bush in general, has a lot to do with me making music at all. It was her complete inability to do what everybody else was doing, she just was a law unto herself. I found that incredibly awe-inspiring, in most ways.

I also loved her use of strings, in a sort of choppy choppy way, rather than a sentimental way. In pop music, you tend to have strings just colouring in the chords at the back or doing a syrupy high note, and I always thought they could do more than that, and she proved it in a kind of [mimics heavy staccato strings] kind of baroque style, which I have shamelessly pilfered basically. The second half she goes off on one, and some of it’s a bit silly, but, you know, who cares? Even when it’s silly it’s great.

Now I’m pretty sure I just took one listen to ‘Running Up That Hill’, which would’ve been the first single, and thought, "I’m having that". I would’ve bought it on cassette because that was the era, and I probably wore out the cassette until it warbled and I had to buy a new one!