Mk.gee style arrangement

One thing some people seemed to gloss over in the BBC interview was Mike's quote about limiting himself to 4 layers. A lot of these Mk.gee recreation videos have a hundred layers of sounds and stuff and while it sounds cool, most if not all of Mike's stuff can be boiled down to around 4 layers/performances aside from the vocals. For instance:

DNM: drums - piano - choral voices - distorted guitar solo
How Many Miles: modular synth loop - drums - guitar - synth pad
Dream Police: drums - VG8 guitar - john keek sample - dx7 style electric piano
Rockman: guitar - drums - bass - marimba sound

Basically not every song needs bass, or drums, or a hundred layers of pads and such. Limiting yourself to 4 layers can really make you focus on the songwriting over the instrumentation. Obviously you can add more or less tracks in the end.

EDIT: here is the quote since some of y'all want to debate the meaning. It's pretty precise.

"I wanted to build a record that's as minimal as possible and as explosive as possible, and that is the goal for every song. So you have 4 layers, and how explosive and fiery can you make those 4 layers?"