There are artists who build a career in straight lines – and then there is Ben Watkins, whose catalogue sprawls like a circuit board. The copper lines trace a complex circuit that takes in 80s new wave, post-punk studio experimentation, proto-techno, psy-trance, soundtrack work, and full-blown multimedia spectacle.
Best known as the force behind Juno Reactor, Watkins has spent decades playing with genres; treating each of his projects less as a reinvention than part of a strategy of tension. Before the Goa beaches, festival stages, and Hollywood soundtracks, Watkins was cutting his teeth in London bands and playing venues like The Hope and Anchor. The Hitmen, whose work brought him into the orbit of producer Martin Rushent, combined punk energy, new wave sharpness and synth-minded production.
From there, Watkins moved deeper into electronic territory. The Flowerpot Men and later Sunsonic pushed drum machines, sequencers and studio processing to the front. With these acts, Watkins was building tracks that now sound like missing the links between post-punk, industrial funk, and the first outlines of rave culture. These projects were foundational experiments in groove hypnosis, sonic collage and scene-setting atmosphere – all of which would become core to Juno Reactor’s mission.
Long before psy-trance became a durable genre label, Juno Reactor were already making electronic music that felt ritualistic, visual, and narrative-driven – as if every track were soundtracking an unseen film. Albums like Transmissions stretched dance music across timelines and cultures.
Even at Juno Reactor’s peak, Watkins’ path kept splitting outward. He brought his aesthetic into other people’s work, including the scandal-prone actress, Traci Lords. Later, his work on The Matrix sequels, along with the orchestral score for Brave Story, confirmed that Watkins was never simply writing tracks for clubs – he was building worlds.
10. The Hitmen – Bates Motel
The Hitmen are best known as the band that Alan Wilder played with before he joined Depeche Mode. He didn’t stay long, but the band found its own way towards electronics. “Bates Motel” puts Watkins at the centre of The Hitmen’s nervy new wave – a structure he struggled with, commercially. The foundations of Juno Reactor were built in reaction to the lessons learned gigging in London.
9. The Flowerpot Men – Jo’s So Mean to Josephine
“Jo’s So Mean to Josephine” catches Watkins in the act of crossing from band logic into machine logic. Armed with equipment bought with a £200 bequest, Watkins managed to combine Suicide with Bauhaus. The guitars still jab and the vocals still carry post-punk abrasion, but the real drama is in the mechanised pulse underneath. Watkins had been listening to a lot of DAF, at the time, and it is revealed in the dramatic bassline.
8. The Youth and Ben Watkins – Incompressible Megalaurians
7. Sunsonic – Innocent Man
By the time Watkins reached Sunsonic, rhythm had become less a backing element than the organising principle itself. “Innocent Man” feels like a bridge between post-punk’s wiry experimentation and the body-focused momentum of late-80s electronic culture, with groove and texture pushing to the front.
The track matters because it captures a producer’s mentality taking over from a songwriter’s. Rather than serving a conventional chorus, the arrangement serves accumulation, pressure and release, which is one of the clearest clues to how Watkins would later build Juno Reactor tracks.
6. Juno Reactor – High Energy Protons (Orion Mix)
The power of “High Energy Protons” lies in pacing. Watkins arranges the track like a sequence of revealed environments, opening space and then clamping it shut again. Even early Juno Reactor feels ready to fill warehouses.
