I'm not saying I don't ever improvise because I do that quite a lot, especially with other people, but generally I've got an idea in my head and then I'll pursue it 'til I get there.

I still love pop music, I still have a huge pop music collection, and I like that juxtaposition of styles.

I grew up in the South Wales valleys, but I think my parents realised from quite an early age that if they hadn't sent me to boarding school I would have probably gone to prison. And it cost them absolutely everything.

The thing I've learned is it's good to restrict your palette somewhat. I will try and, say, use two or three instruments on one track. You learn, after a while, they're all good at certain things and other things fall outside of the natural areas they work well in, so I tend to stick with what they do best.

If you saw my musical collection it's absolutely horrendous, I've got everything from Stockhausen to The Beach Boys to Gina G, all sorts of terrible things and other people come here and look at my record collection and go, "Ah, you can't possibly like that - how embarrassing!"

I write all the time, I've got a big, thick, old ledger book that I write stuff down in. I used to watch TV and write things that people would say and now I tend to get it more out of books and from conversations with people I meet.

I don't really worry about whether things fit into a genre or not, it's whether I like it and whether the two things sit well together, that's my main criteria when I write.