Like his music, Ben Watkins has been on an epic journey. His name might not sound familiar but he has been involved with various bands and genres of music, including the scoring of several films. Today he releases his seventh Juno Reactor album, Gods and Monsters (check out our review right here). We recently caught up with the artist to discuss the past, present and future of his band.

PLAYBOY: Gods and Monsters is one of your most ambitious efforts to date. Can you tell us a little bit about the recording process and why it took almost four years to follow-up Labyrinth?
WATKINS: On Gods & Monsters I didn’t have a road map, or if I did, it was three-dimensional and I felt I could go anywhere—try out anything under the Juno Reactor flag. I usually go pretty mad as I enter the vortex of an album, not a good time to be around me, nothing seems to make sense. I get job envy and I usually wish I were a marine biologist. Slowly the pieces come together, harder on this album as I saw it as a driving album not club, not live, just driving with your iPod on shuffle.
 

PLAYBOY: This album, like the last one, is loaded with guest vocalists and musicians. How do you find these guys? Do you seek them out, do you have auditions?
WATKINS: I never do auditions. I heard Yasmin Levy singing on BBC Radio 3. I stopped the car and fell in love—what a voice she has. I called the station, rang her manager, few days later we met up at the studio. One take later I was tingling all over, amazing—Ghetto Priest I nicked him from ADF as he was totally under appreciated there. He reminds me of Nat King Cole crossed with a pirate. Who else? Mike Garson—always my favorite piano man, since Bowie’s Aladine Sane. I found him on MySpace, contacted him, brief musical handshakes went on, four hours later I had one track back from L.A.Great way to work. Hopefully on the next album I can get him in the same country.

PLAYBOY: Any chance you might reunite with any of your past musicians again? Pete Glenister? Stefan Holweck? Mike Maguire? Johann Bley?
WATKINS: The door is always open to some, whilst to others, they know it is forever closed.

PLAYBOY: Do you have a wishlist of artists or musicians you’d like to recruit for Juno Reactor?
WATKINS: To near the finish line of the last album to put on my poaching kit, no famous people turn me on, except Bowie, but I can’t see that happening. I’m really happy with all the musicians I know, it’s like a football team now. I call them when the right tune comes along.

PLAYBOY: You’ve produced some great tracks for solo artists, like Traci Lords for instance. Do you ever plan to produce full albums for solo artists again someday?
WATKINS: If they were all as nice to work with as Traci, I would. Working with some bands puts me off the whole idea. I’d rather spend my time pulling fleas off my dog’s balls.

PLAYBOY: You produced songs with The Creatures and remixed songs for Siouxsie and the Banshees before.  How did those projects come to fruition?
WATKINS: They asked me after Budgie loved Bible of Dreams. It was really easy and fun to write with them. Siouxsie Sioux, Steve Severin and Budgie came down to hear a remix of a Banshees tune I did. Like royalty, Siouxsie sat down, lifted up her hand, two fingers open, Steve inserted a silk cut cigarette, Budgie ready and waiting provided the flame, Siouxsie inhaled deeply, leaning back and nodding to the ever increasing thumping beat, blowing enormous clouds of smoke. She gave her approval, I loved her attitude, but glad I’m not in her band.

PLAYBOY: Usually artists rely on a lyric to come up with a song title. So how do you come up with the song titles for your instrumental tracks? For example, how and why did songs like “Immaculate Crucifixion” or “Masters of the Universe” get their names?
WATKINS: I keep them in storage for years; I must have had “Immaculate Crucifixion” for 10 years, maybe more. I jot things down all the time, sometimes in my mobile. I love looking at people and imagining their secret lives, so most come from there. “Immaculate Crucifixion” is to do with suicide, and how in Japan it is seen as an honorable, beautiful act, for me it is also heroic.

PLAYBOY: We haven’t heard your voice since your days in The Hitmen. On Gods and Monsters, you make a great vocal appearance in “The Perfect Crime” and “Pretty Girl.” Any chance of a Ben Watkins solo album one day?
WATKINS: I doubt it, I love writing instrumental music too much. I sound like a goat singing, so not the easiest for me to stand back and enjoy, there were other bands in-between, which at least were a better grade of crap than The Hitmen. Why did you bring that bunch of bastards up?!

PLAYBOY: For one thing, there has always been an interest amongst Alan Wilder followers for a reissue of The Hitmen album Torn Together, something that’s never been available on CD. Is that something on the table?
WATKINS: No, I don’t think so. Also Alan didn’t play on that unforgettably boring album. I’m sure it would have been no better with him on it, as at that time he was brown nosing the guitarist and drummer. I don’t think I ever spoke to him—his wife was nice though. The Hitmen was the reason I did what I did. I hated everything about the band; I knew when I left I had to start from scratch and find my own way. First bus stop was DAF and Suicide, and I still love them to death for saving me. Oh, and Killing Joke.

PLAYBOY: So what do you have planned for this upcoming tour for Gods and Monsters?
WATKINS: To bring the circus that is Juno Reactor live, all the way across America and beyond.

PLAYBOY: So what are Ben Watkins’s favorite Juno Reactor tracks of all time? Any least favorites?
WATKINS: Least favorite is “Contact,” gives me the screaming ab-dabs. Her voice--Stephane’s girlfriend—yuck. She was a pig, like Plug from “The Bash Street Kids.” Fucking crazy woman. My girlfriend gave her a Scottish kiss [headbutt] in Israel one New Year’s day. That was a good day. “Navras” is my favorite track, loved working with all the musicians. Don Davis [Composer of The Matrix trilogy] was great fun. Such an easy track to write, some take ages to complete, this track wrote itself.

PLAYBOY: You recently scored the Japanese anime film Brave Story. Do you enjoy scoring films and is this going to eventually be a regular thing for you?
WATKINS: I love scoring and I want to do it all the time—it is my blood. I feel alive like at no other time. I wish I didn’t feel this way, as I now know how dead I feel when I’m not doing it.

PLAYBOY: Over the course of your career, we’ve seen Juno Reactor evolve from a pure electronic sound with no vocals or lyrics, to a more intimate and raw “band” sound, loaded with real instruments, strings and vocals. While I prefer the latter of the two, do you ever get the urge to revisit your roots and give fans an “old school” Juno Reactor album just for fun?
WATKINS: Funny you should say that, I have the temptation to bring it full circle. Don’t know yet.

PLAYBOY: I know it’s probably too soon, but what’s next for Juno Reactor? What do you have in mind for the next album and when might fans expect it?
WATKINS: Hopefully it will be unexpected to me. That is what I enjoy the most, turning over a rock and finding something beautiful, crazy, fucked up and forgotten. Something that gets me dreaming, new horizons, people and places to go. I want to live down in Mexico for a while, India, where ever, just get my butt out of this boring overrated shit hole that is Brighton.