REDUCTION

Reduction is the third out of the three albums that Peter Banks released during the 1990's, and it can be seen as a continuation of the previous two. But even though this trio of albums have a somewhat similar sound and style, the feel of Reduction is slightly different compared to the previous two albums. There is more acoustic guitar here which I like and some moments are very tranquil and atmospheric. There is a kind of Dance beat on some of the tracks and I am reminded a bit of Mike Oldfield's Songs From Distant Earth. There are again some samples of spoken word and music from other sources (including a snippet of The Syn's Flowerman right at the beginning of the album), but the samples are less distracting than on the previous album.

The title of the album might refer to the fact that this time Banks does everything alone whilst before he had some help from a keyboard player. The absence of keyboards is however not a problem as they are replaced here by guitar synthesisers played by Banks himself.

In terms of quality, Reduction constitutes an improvement over the previous Self-Contained, and it is as good if not better than Instinct. This is Banks' last ever solo album, but he worked with several artists in various other contexts before he sadly passed away in 2013.