You join me in the South Kensington offices of Hit & Run, a company dedicated to the various business-affairs of a rather famous rock band called Genesis. This is clearly no small undertaking, as is clear from the mass of silver, gold and platinum disks decorating the walls of the maze of corridors through which I walk towards a 45 minute rendezvous with Tony Banks.

Outside the interview room, I attempt to read an apparently unattended piece of paper, which demands my interest by the simple fact that it is upside down and therefore probably not for my attention. Headed 'Tony Banks — Itinerary — May 23rd', it turns out I am the ninth person Tony has talked to today. And it's only 2.30.

STILL

The punishing schedule is all part of a new campaign, the climax of which will be the release of a new album called Still, the strongest attempt yet to introduce the music of Genesis' enigmatic keyboard player Tony Banks to a wider audience. The high profile approach is reflected in the choice of lead vocalists on the new album, in particular Nik Kershaw and ex-Marillion front man Fish. The less well known, but not inconsiderable, talents of Jayney Klimek and Andy Taylor are also featured. The former guested on Tony's last solo outing, Bankstatement, which was released in 1989. The production credits on Still are shared by Banks and Nick Davis, better know for his engineering work on Mike & The Mechanics' Living Years.

With such a diverse group of vocalists, Still has something of a split personality. The three Kershaw tracks, which include the single 'I Wanna Change The Score' and the searing 'Red Day on Blue Street', are slices of immaculate contemporary pop, whereas the two Fish tracks, especially 'Another Murder Of A Day', recall an altogether different era.

The wide range of styles reflects Tony's diverse musical tastes, and encourages the casual listener to try something new.

"What I'm doing now isn't as complex as the early Genesis stuff, but it has some of the same elements in that the chord changes are not totally familiar ones. When people hear a song that has a chord change they don't immediately recognise, some say 'Well, I'm not sure whether I like that', whereas my attitude is 'maybe it'll win me over.'"

Tony's current favourite artists are similarly unlikely to receive airplay (and therefore sell albums) without a deliberate attempt to fashion a single. "You just don't hear things on the radio that make you want to buy an album's worth of material at the moment." Not that Tony buys an album every day, as he freely admits. "The tapes in my car were all bought six months ago!" These include Sting's Soul Cages — "I preferred Blue Turtles" — plus several Randy Newman titles and Still's antithesis — A Walk Across The Rooftops by The Blue Nile.

"I first heard Rooftops when I was doing Bankstatement, and I thought it was really interesting. I like their minimalistic approach and the uncommercial sound. I like anything that's different from the mainstream really, and I still think there's much to be discovered in classical music."

Another tape which found its way into Tony's car was Nik Kershaw's second album, The Works. "I think Nik is a performer who's been overlooked because people think he's something he's not. I liked his album so I called him up. I didn't think he'd be very busy because Works hadn't done that well, but in fact it turned out he was doing this Chesney Hawkes stuff, so he was quite happy! He was very enthusiastic about working with me, and it was nice that he decided to sing my songs, seeing as he'd never sung for anyone else."

"When people hear a song that has a chord change they don't immediately recognise, some say 'Well, I'm not sure whether I like that', whereas my attitude is 'maybe it'll win me over'."

Tony's relationship with Fish dates back to 1986 when the pair co-wrote the song 'Short Cut To Somewhere' for the film Quicksilver. Tony made his second approach after writing an extended piece which he felt would benefit from the kind of lyrical imagery for which Fish is renowned. 'Another Murder Of A Day' was the end result and, as mentioned earlier, the track is reminiscent of Genesis' earliest period. Tony makes no apologies.

"There were comparisons with early Genesis when 'Short Cut To Somewhere' came out too, but I think Fish's voice has its own quality and a texture that really suits the way I put music together."

RECORDING

Fish and Kershaw's vocal overdubs were the final stage of a recording project which began in Tony's home studio at the beginning of 1990. "Originally, I recorded everything into Cubase. I moved up to Cubase because my Pro24 didn't seem to play back exactly what I played in — the notes seemed to move a bit, but Cubase doesn't seem to do that."

A highly skilled player, Tony is not a heavy user of the quantise menu. "It's OK with drums, but when you're working with other instruments, you have to be very careful.

I come from a totally different angle really. I don't think of Cubase as a sequencer, I use it as an intelligent tape recorder which produces a written score. You get so much more information on one screen with the score display, and I like being able to move notes around. Most of the improvements from Pro24 are very good. It seems that they've listened to the people who actually use the stuff, whereas often I find the improvements to synthesizers are not necessarily that important."

As owner of the latest and greatest from almost every professional synth manufacturer on the planet, Tony is certainly in an ideal position to know. His most recent acquisitions include an Ensoniq VFX and the Korg Wavestation.

"I've got the new Roland thing too [the JD800], which is good because you have the ability to adjust sounds very quickly. It's still not quite right though, because when you edit a sound, you're still changing three or four different tones at once. With the old Prophet V, you just fiddled with the [cut off] frequency control until it slipped into the track — you didn't really have to think about it. With the latest stuff you really have to work it all out in advance."

"There's no way that our jam sessions would be entertaining for someone to listen to! There's really no attempt to make things sound good, because we're not playing to an audience. If somebody walked in the studio, we'd play completely differently."

Tony freely admits that he's never been one of life's programmers. "With MIDI and computers you can get the playing part right first and run through sounds afterwards. It's a totally different way of working, though it means you tend to amass vast libraries of sounds."

In his last Sound On Sound interview in September 1989, Tony's most favoured instrument was the Emu Emulator 2. Since then an E3 has appeared in Tony's set-up. Had it usurped its stable mate?

"It's funny — although the E3 is fantastic in terms of sound quality, I find it much more difficult to use. I'm more into synthesizers than samplers just at the moment, though I still enjoy sampling weird things and turning them backwards and so forth."

As a classically trained pianist, Tony prefers to play his battery of synths from a MIDI'd Yamaha CP70. "I understand the piano touch, and the CP70 seems to be pretty good in terms of accuracy. With synth keyboards, I find myself constantly reaching for the button that switches touch sensitivity off. They just don't respond to the way I play because there's no actual weight on the keyboard. Also, with organ type sounds, if you get it a bit wrong, you're stuck with a sustained sound at the wrong volume."

MUSICIANS

Armed with his trusty Atari computer, a copy of Cubase and several valuable floppy disks, Tony began the process of transferring his keyboard parts at the Genesis private studio in Surrey.

"Nick [Davies] and I recorded all the Cubase stuff on to the digital machine [a brand new Sony 48-track] and then decided which parts we wanted to replace." Drum and bass duties were handled by American drummer Vinnie Colaiuta and bass player par excellence Pino Palladino. Guitar parts were provided by longtime Genesis associate Daryl Stuermer. "It's an entirely artificial way of building a track, but it's not that dissimilar from the way I work in Genesis. Rather than a sequence, we put down a live version of the song with timecode, get the format right, and then add and subtract as we go along."

GENESIS

The Genesis approach is very much in Tony's mind at present, since the band are currently three months into a new album project. Whereas Tony's solo album was written at home, the new Genesis material is being written in the studio. Tony's studio set-up features a CP70 controlling all his synths in omni mode, with different combinations of sounds created live by using an array of volume pedals. It's all part of a hit and miss process which is the key to the evolution of a new Genesis song.

"Abacab was an attempt at being more economical, more concise, avoiding the excesses that had been the Genesis trademark up to that point. We were very pleased the way it turned out. We all felt it actually worked, and it's still one of the group's top five albums."

"There's no way that our jam sessions would be entertaining for someone to listen to! There's really no attempt to make things sound good, because we're not playing to an audience. If somebody walked in the studio, we'd play completely differently — I wouldn't play a B flat to E major for example, I'd hold myself in check. But when you do introduce an unusual chord change and everyone is with you, that's when a song is created."

The new Genesis album will be their 17th, and the first since Invisible Touch appeared over five years ago. Abacab (album number 13) marked a significant shift in the Genesis style towards a much more commercial sound. How I wondered, did such a dramatic change come about?

"It happened very naturally really, because we all came to the same conclusion that maybe we were repeating ourselves — that we'd done as about as much as we could within the original approach. So when we got to Abacab, we decided it was time we had change of producer, time to go for a different approach. Abacab was an attempt at being more economical, more concise, avoiding the excesses that had been the Genesis trademark up to that point. We were very pleased the way it turned out. We all felt it actually worked, and it's still one of the group's top five albums. I know some people feel that they prefer the earlier stuff, but I like it all so I don't care!"

The entire Genesis back catalogue is now available on CD, but like many artists, the band became personally involved in the remastering process after listening to initial CD releases. "We had a slight problem because Virgin released the first CDs from the production masters. It sounded a hell of a lot better than vinyl of course, but those production masters were EQ'd for records — a lot of bass end was rolled out. Also, in those days, albums had to be 22 minutes a side. As ours were often up to 28 minutes, they always sounded rather quiet. So we found the genuine masters and had the CD's reissued. Now everything you hear is what we originally intended."

My personal favourite Genesis track is 'Squank' from the 1977 album A Trick Of The Tail. After Virgin's A&R executive popped in to say "five minutes left", I couldn't help but ask Tony about it. "Squank was our attempt at Led Zeppelin. I heard 'Kashmir' on the radio while I was in Germany and I loved the sound. I wasn't a great Zeppelin fan, but I think that some of their stuff was tremendous. At that stage, Phil was very keen on clicky drum sounds because he was playing very fast at that time, and he wanted to make sure you could hear every beat he played. I always had a yearning for slow heavy drum parts and Mike felt the same, so we played Kashmir to Phil and said we'd really like to do something like this. Phil said OK, and since then he's never looked back — he won't play fast parts now, it's mostly slow and heavy."

Could this be a veiled comment on the new Genesis album? We should know before the end of the year. In the meantime, check out Still. It's an album that any Genesis fan will appreciate, and the more commercial tracks are perfect for those days when the sun is shining and you just can't help feeling good.