THE FIRST ALBUM I BOUGHT WITH MY OWN MONEY
It was a cassette of Public Enemy – It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back. I was a little kid in a poor neighbourhood so I kind of identified with them as a skinny little red-headed white kid growing up in WA. That was in the late '80s, early '90s.

THE ALBUM I'M LOVING RIGHT NOW
The one I've been blasting at the moment is the new Godspeed! You Black Emperor record. I've loved this band for a long time and I know they just put out the single, so they're about to put this album out. It's just so gothy and post-rock and doomy. There's these 20-minute drones and all this. It's just the density and the texture. It's my little soundtrack to my solitary lounge room at the moment, which is a bit depressing but I love it.

MY FAVOURITE PARTY ALBUM
Whenever I'm at a party or someone lets me have control of the player or whatever I always go for Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. That's about as happy as I get. I've always seen myself as never quite cool enough to be taking the reins and controlling the vibe at a party. I'm the kind of guy who'll turn up and put on My Bloody Valentine and bring everybody down while I'm thinking it's the greatest thing in the world. I'm not a DJ.

MY FAVOURITE COMEDOWN ALBUM
It's hard to go past Astral Weeks by Van Morrison. It's got a little bit of The Velvet Underground-y mournfulness to it. It's this really haunting, acoustic, droney type of thing. I found it later in life – only eight years ago or something – but it's always been a killer for me.

THE MOST SURPRISING RECORD IN MY COLLECTION
I've got this record by Lady Antebellum. I think I got it from my record label and I'd never listened to it until the other day. It's proper country, pretty slick. I'd seen it sitting there for a little while and I'd never really quite known what it is. Now I know – it's not really my bag.

THE FIRST GIG I ATTENDED
I went to see The Smashing Pumpkins in 1996 when they had Mellon Collie & The Infinite Sadness out and it was the tour for that album. I was a teenage kid and I got really stoned with my friends beforehand – had a purple, collared Billy Corgan type of shirt because I was a massive fan. Yeah, I was so stoned that I didn't remember most of it, but I remember every time Billy was bathed in red light it felt like there was this demon staring down on us. It was really fucking freaky but awesome.

THE WEIRDEST GIG EXPERIENCE I'VE HAD
We were working on our record in LA this year and we got invited to this gig at a bookstore. We got there and there's all these people drinking coffee and egg-nog and shit like that and there was this ten- or 12-piece drum and brass band who were just walking around the bookstore just screaming at the top of their lungs. It was so bohemian and arthouse and yeah, borderline bullshit but also fucking awesome. I was walking around drinking a can of Coke looking at books on the shelves and there's three dudes with drums standing behind you just belting their drums playing this really syncopated marching band stuff. I've never seen anything like it. It was really quite bizarre.

MY BIGGEST NON-MUSICAL INFLUENCES
It'd have to be all the other great artforms in my world: books, art and films. I'm a huge film nut – I'll watch anything. Same with books. I'm always fascinated at the lifestyles of artists in different faculties and the lengths that great artists have gone to for their work, or great filmmakers or photographers or painters. I probably get as much out of that, if not more, than musical influence.

THE COOLEST PERSON I'VE MET
Warren Ellis. We did the Big Day Out a few years ago and Grinderman were on there, and I finally built up the courage to go up there and talk to him. He was really, really nice: Just a really sweet, Ocker, cool, relaxed-as-fuck dude. I got to speak to him about film soundtracks – he did The Proposition and The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford and stuff. So that was my huge fan boy moment. I just think he's the most stylish dude in the world as well. Let's face it, we all get older and we're all gonna go bald and have grey hair and all this shit – he's the epitome of staying stylish until you're pretty much dead. You can't get cooler than that.

THE BIGGEST CELEBRITY CRUSH I'VE HAD
Daniel Day-Lewis. I've kind of loved him since My Left Foot and In The Name Of The Father and even through the modern stuff like Gangs Of New York and There Will Be Blood. The things I would do for that man. He just fascinates me. You always have your hand in your fist going, “Yes! You're a fucking bad arse.”

IF I COULD HANG OUT IN ANY TIME AND PLACE IN HISTORY
Game Of Thrones has been ruling our world for the last few years and I'm probably way off the mark with the actual years but I'd have to go back to that old gothic, mythic feudal type of life where you can just eat meat off the bone and hide from dragons. Maybe pre-lute, maybe post-lute. I don't know. Wherever dragons would be, that would be badarse. If I could ride a dragon – I'd go to that time.

IF I WASN'T MAKING MUSIC
I'd probably either still be doing psychology or I'd be an architect. They were both things I started studying but gave up at various points. Maybe I'd be an architect first. I gave up on psychology only because I didn't agree with the format of university – I actually really liked studying.