JOHN RAIN

“ I was an indie kid in Watford and spent a lot of time in record shops. I was into Britpop, bands like Suede and Kingmaker. My dad was into stuff like Gilbert And Sullivan and comedy records, and my mum was into ELO and The Beatles, so prog wasn’t around me when I was little. But I do remember my dad getting Jeff Wayne’s The War Of The Worlds, and that was probably my primer when I became obsessed with the artwork and the sleeve notes.

In my mid-to-late 20s I was living in Brighton, and I’d got into this sort of background music and library music scene and bands like Zero 7, Blue States and Lemon Jelly, who are quite. Something changed and suddenly I thought: ‘This is brilliant.’ I’d just switched off from music somehow, and now I went back and started digging for older stuff. I found the internet so useful; I ripped and burned many things in my new pursuit. It was all good. It was archaeology and fascinating to me.