2. Firem

Firem is the name of a planet in Nintendo DS puzzle game Meteos - which inspired me to swipe an online computer simulation of Earth being hit by a meteor and use it for accompanying visuals. So there's definitely some kind of album-themed, interstellar, apocalyptic angst type-thing going on...

That low-slung seven-note riff has more than a whiff of Black Sabbath about it. That's because Black Sabbath were one of my formative musical influences. Growing up in a dog-rough, drafty old terraced house, alive with creaks and clunks and fleeting shadows (I later found out it was overdue for slum clearance) led to a spooked-out obsession with 'the paranormal'. So, Mr Tony Iommi's growling, reverb-drenched doom-rock was the ideal soundtrack to those twilight trips to the outside toilet.

By glamorous contrast, the remixed version, on the 'Stay At Home' EP, was partly written in downtime in a posh hotel room at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival.

1. Square Leg

John Carpenter, really. His movie soundtracks always had that ominous, pulsing, relentless feel - something wicked this way comes and there's nothing you can do about it. Pretty much how I felt about nuclear weapons in the '80s. I used to speculate on where would be the best place in the world to hide from a nuclear war. I thought Patagonia (after reading Bruce Chatwin's 'In Patagonia') but my pocket-money could never have covered flight and accommodation.

The samples are from Barry Hines' extraordinary Threads. My favourite horror films - The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Exorcist, Halloween... - they're all 'horrible' in their own twisted fantasy-worlds, but Threads is the horror of the possible; the thought of all those cosy provincial mundanities - milk bottles on a doorstep, the local pub, factory chimnies - being incinerated in an instant.

'Square Leg' was a "home defence" exercise in 1980 that calculated the result of an all-out Soviet nuclear attack. The (conservative) estimate was 53% of the population killed, with a further 35% short-term survivors and 12% suffering serious injuries. Obscene enough, but we'll get to Mr Oppenheimer later...