I've spoken quite a lot over the years about music that informed me when I was younger, but I realised I've never really spoken about Blur. I think they were a big influence, certainly to me, and to Russell, the guitar player in Bloc Party.

Graham Coxon is such an inventive and interesting guitar player. It was always such a pleasure listening to what he was doing, and then watching him perform, trying to work out how he was doing it.

"Oily Water" was one of the first songs that I heard where I wanted to figure out how he was making the guitar work like that. It was one of the first moments that got me thinking about the sonic space that a guitar can inhabit. Graham is a phenomenal blues player and a country player too; he is incredibly versatile, but he's also very exciting, because he's taken his playing off the fretboard. There was a really inventive use of guitar pedals from him, that as a young person definitely started me off on a path.

Parklife was one of the first indie rock records I ever heard. My sister had a copy of it. Although I appreciated it, there was a lot of stuff from that time in the ‘90s that Blur kind of represented that I wasn't really so into, when it started getting a bit Loaded magazine. I liked them more when they ditched the Carry On film vibe and it got a bit darker.

My favourite record of theirs is Blur. You can hear the influence of American noise bands in Graham's playing, like Dinosaur Jr and that's the most exciting Blur period for me personally. With their earlier records there's this kind of psychedelic quality that they have kept in places, and “Oily Water” is more psychedelic.

“Add N To (X) were a British synth combo from the early to mid-90s that I really liked. They really stood out in a sea of identikit indie bands. It was really refreshing to see a band where these analogue synth sounds were front and centre. The keyboards weren't just in the background, it was aggressive, driving, synth music. It didn't seem like anybody else was doing that at the time and I really loved them.

John, our Bloc Party drum tech, used to drum for Add N To (X). He was always telling me stories about what life on the road with them was like, and it sounds like it was fun. I remember this track, particularly because it had a really naughty video that I think might have been banned at the time. I remember that was a shocking moment.

BEST FIT: An explicit video, especially one that ends up being banned, is one way of making sure you create a cult-like following, isn’t it? I remember the controversy around The Prodigy's video for "Smack My Bitch Up" lasting long after its release in 1997.

I feel like back then, it felt shocking if a band had banned video. You felt like you had to know why. It also meant that bands or artists were taking a chance, because people might not actually see the video if it wasn't played on commercial stations. Now you can have explicit content in videos and there are so many ways you can get around it. I guess traditional music streaming channels that play videos are less popular now, so it doesn't feel like it has quite the same effect if someone releases an explicit video.

BEST FIT: I work on The Box’s network of music channels, and in terms of the impact of explicit music videos, you’re absolutely right. I grew up watching music videos on those channels before YouTube and Spotify took the focus away from them. I’d phone up and vote for the videos I wanted to see! Due to Ofcom compliance regulations, we’re unable to play most of the explicit content in music videos, but there’s still a strong nostalgia for the platforms, especially Kerrang! TV. If you want to see the explicit video that accompanies a new track though, you can access it at any time online. But 10- 20 years ago, it was a completely different landscape, wasn't it?

Thank you for reminding me about The Box. I often wonder about that channel, because I remember watching it when “Wannabe” by The Spice Girls came out, when that video was played every single hour and thinking this was the start of something. I've always been curious as to whether music channels like The Box are still operational in today's world and it sounds like they are.

This track represents a specific time and a period in my life. I saw Peaches play The Teaches of Peaches, at the Royal Festival Hall for Grace Jones' Meltdown last year and going back and listening to that album in its entirety brought on this wave of emotion, memories and feelings.

I remembered vividly listening to this record at parties in London and in Berlin, and being marvelled by how it cut through, specifically this track, which is the 'big' track.

It was so powerful for me, because up until that point I had this sense that for things to be powerful in music, they needed to be big. Emotions needed to be big, and sounds needed to be big - that had been kind of ingrained in me.

But listening to The Teaches of Peaches and falling in love with this record, you realise its real charm and power lies in the fact that it's not big. It sounds very kind of knackered, very low-fi and cheaply recorded, but it shows the power of a great lyric and a great beat.

Listening back to that record now, it still sounds great. The production on it is perfect - it's skeletal, but it works. This record was lightyears ahead of everything else I was listening to at that time. I remember when the song originally dropped and being in clubs hearing it, and it being a real moment.

I got into James Holden when I started DJing in the late noughties. He was always an artist I would put on, but I was actually more interested in what he was saying with his records, rather than the hot tracks he was dropping. He was someone from that time that I remember having a lot of time for.

The Inheritors is probably one of my favourite electronic records of the last twenty years, the balance between the electronic textures and the organic textures is sublime. You really get the sense when listening to the album that things are building and growing. It feels alive, you can feel the warmth and the light in it.

With so much electronic music, you can hear the grid, or you can hear things in expected kinds of places - and that's fine. But the strength of The Inheritors is that it feels like a performance. There's this idea that is circling throughout the songs on the record, and it takes you somewhere. You can imagine him getting hands on with his equipment and coaxing these sounds out.

There is something quite organic about how the whole thing is put together. On this track "Renata", there's all these gurgling synth arpeggios, and then two thirds of the way into the track, the live acoustic drum sound brings the whole thing together. It's a really clever balance.

I think ROSALÍA is one of, if not the most interesting pop stars out there right now. It gives me hope when a pop star like this comes along and you can hear that there is a depth and intensity to the sound. I love that her records are sneaking things into the mainstream.

In this track, you can hear the industrial-ness, but you can also hear this Reggaeton-feel flowing through it, and then I think there's touches of The Downward Spiral by Nine Inch Nails.

BEST FIT: I’m a big fan of The Downward Spiral and I think it’s because underneath all of the abrasive noise and synth textures, there’s this almost funk-type feel to some of the rhythms on the tracks?

I can kind of hear a funk, or at least a groove element in there that maybe people wouldn't ordinarily associate with it, because it's so abrasive. I was listening to “Closer” by Nine Inch Nails a lot when I was making The Flames, specifically the last half of it, where all the synth sounds come in. They all stack on top of each other.

Kind of like with this ROSALÍA track, it’s just so naked, then all of a sudden, there's this jazz piano break that comes out of nowhere. It's bonkers and experimental in a way that I can get down with. I'm always excited to hear what her records sound like and I hope that there are many more.