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Origins: | U.K. |
| Styles: | Ethno techno, world industrial, techno, ambient-dark | |
| Discography: | 2015 – The Golden Sun Remixed 2013 – The Golden Sun of the Great East 2011 – Inside the Reactor (remix album) 2008 – Gods and Monsters 2004 – Labyrinth 2003 – Zwara 2002 – Hotaka (more) |
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| Web Site: | ReactorLeak.com | |
| Ben Watkins has been the constant force behind this definitive electronica project that has featured many talented musicians. Juno Reactor is the thinking person’s electronic band, artistic and progressive, avoiding the idiosyncratic clichés that plague most electronic music. Though romanticized by some as being the creators of “goa trance,” Juno Reactor left behind repetitive electronic loop music early on and evolved a more dynamic and eclectic techno-trance sound. Watkins has emphasized live musicianship and human emotion, which has given Juno Reactor an organic feel missing from most electronic music.
Juno Reactor is probably one of the most overlooked ethno techno world fusion acts out there, yet their work has been used in everything from film scores like “Mortal Kombat,” “Virtuosity,” and “Lost in Space” to sporting events like grid iron football, basketball, and even the Japanese Grand Prix. 2015 – The Golden Sun Remixed
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Juno Reactor was one of the first electronica acts to embrace world fusion. Their fourth album, Bible of Dreams, had World influences that range from the African percussion of Amampondo (Nelson Mandela’s favorite traditional South African percussion act) on the song “Congo Fury” to heavy Middle Eastern influences on the song “God is God”. The latter is perhaps the epitome of ethno techno, and the Juno Reactor turned to Spanish influences in their fourth album Pistolero. On their fifth album, Shango, they returned to heavy Japanese themes that they first explored in their 1996 single “Samurai,” and picked up again in the Taiko drumming of 2002’s “Hotaka.”