I love Lady Gaga and I love Katy Perry and R&B and rap music... I love big, American pop music.

I was having a conversation with my father and he was talking about this thing - strangeness and charm. It's actually the name of the two smallest particles that there are when you split the atom, so I wrote a song around it. I even managed to fit the word 'hydrogen' in there. Isn't that a nice thing for scientists to call them though?

My visual landscape as a child was the inside of a lot of these old churches. And the Baroque drama of the things was what I was first engaging with artwise. I'm much more attracted to the aesthetic of religious iconography than the actual religious side. The passion and the blood and the violence and the gaudy side of it I find really fascinating.

I've always been able to just concoct a melody quite easily - it's just kind of instinct, really. You've got to channel your subconscious.

I spent my 16th birthday high as a kite, jumping out of a tree topless in my local park just because it felt amazing hitting the ground.

Music to me is so internal. It's physical and it's emotional. Whereas fashion is so much about the external that it's almost like a break. It's not inner turmoil. It's total escapism.

The first album, for better or for worse, was done over from the ages of 17-22, with a couple of different producers. Some of it was recorded in an old swimming pool, some of it was recorded in a synagogue - it kind of was all over the place.