History

The Missile Project

Juno Reactor was formed initially in 1990 by Ben Watkins and Stephen Holweck as an experimental ambient project to record a soundtrack to accompany a sculptural art installation and performance project by the sculpture artist (and Watkins' girlfriend) Norma Fletcher called "The Missile Project". The centerpiece of the project was a 70-foot decommissioned missile nicknamed "Juno Reactor" which they rolled around London while playing their music to raise awareness about nuclear war. According to Watkins, "[it] was blue concrete. And it looked like a dinosaur tail. And a smoke came out of it." [1] The project took over a month to complete, however the exhibition lasted only several hours as London police arrived to break up the missile and arrested all members of the project. The music was eventually released as Juno Reactor's second album, Luciana.

1993 and beyond

In 1993, Juno Reactor released their first single, "Laughing Gas", on NovaMute. This was soon followed by their debut album, Transmissions. This release was considered a huge success and is considered to be one of the first albums in the goa trance genre. Later, the band released their above mentioned Luciana album on Alex Paterson's (The Orb) Inter-Modo label. Juno Reactor left NovaMute and Inter-Modo in 1995 and signed to UK's Blue Room Released label to release Guardian Angel single. Their album Beyond the Infinite was released in 1996.

Appearances in media

Their remix of Traci Lords' song "Control" as an instrumental was featured on the soundtrack for the Mortal Kombat movie. They returned for the sequel Mortal Kombat Annihilation with tracks like "Conga Fury". Later, the group, in collaboration with Don Davis, had a number of tracks featured on the soundtracks for the Matrix series of films (most notably the famous freeway chase scene in The Matrix Reloaded, which featured "Mona Lisa Overdrive", as well as the Animatrix, which featured the track, "Masters Of The Universe" on the segment, "Kid's Story" and "Conga Fury (Animatrix Remix)" on the segment, "Final Flight of the Osiris" ). Their single "Guardian Angel" was featured as the opening theme of the anime series Texhnolyze. "Guardian Angel" was also featured in the movie Drive starring Mark Dacascos and Kadeem Hardison. Other Juno Reactor tracks appear on movies such as Eraser, Virtuosity, Lost In Space, the Romeo + Juliet trailer, Beowulf and even Once Upon a Time in Mexico. Juno Reactor soundtracks have also been played during baseball, basketball, and gridiron football games, the Japanese Grand Prix, and appear on the PlayStation 2 games Jet Moto 3 and Frequency, as well as the Xbox game Mad Dash Racing. Juno Reactor also scored the entirety of the Mark of Kri game.

Trivia

• The name Juno is the name of an Ancient Roman goddess. In this fashion, Juno Reactor symbolizes a "powerhouse of the ancient religions". One of the band's logos is actually a form of the symbol associated with the asteroid Juno.
• The title of the album Beyond the Infinite could be a reference to 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the sequence "Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite". This may be related to the several occurrences of their sampling of this movie on the Transmissions album.

Discography

Main Albums

• Transmissions (NovaMute Records 1993)
• Luciana (Inter-Modo 1994)
• Beyond the Infinite (Blue Room Released 1995)
• Bible of Dreams (Blue Room Released 1997)
• Shango (Metropolis Records 2001)
• Labyrinth (Metropolis Records, Universal Music 2004)

Singles & EPs

• Laughing Gas (1993)
• High Energy Protons (1994)
• Guardian Angel (1995)
• Samurai (1996)
• Conga Fury (1996)
• Jungle High (1997)
• God Is God (1997)
• GOD IS GOD!! (Front 242 Mixes) (1997)
• Pistolero (Blue Room Released 2000)
• Masters Of The Universe (2001)
• Hotaka (2002)
• The Zwara EP (2003)

Live Recordings & Compilation Albums

• Odyssey 1992-2002
• Shango Tour 2001 Tokyo (Live In Tokyo) (2002)