Juno Reactor's Ben Watkins has always struck me as a songwriter. Among his peers in the ethnotechno set -- a community seemingly dedicated to instrumentally adventurous grooves -- he's relatively unique, fleshing out his compositions in a manner that owes more to pop song conventions than dancefloor linearity.
On Shango, he has also raised the bar for atmospheric composition. Each of these nine songs deserves to be used in a fantastic, visionary sci-fi film; they're loaded with the sort of sweeping cinematic sprawl that inspires writers, directors and designers. Hopefully the Wachowski brothers will keep a copy of Shango handy while they're writing the next two Matrix scripts (or perhaps bring Watkins in to do the music).
Shango opens massively with "Pistolero", one of the coolest singles I've heard all year. Billy Idol guitarist Steve Stevens ads some primal axework on this twenty-second century spaghetti western theme -- Spanish guitars and horns mix with pulsating keyboards, breakbeats and pistol-shot samples, uncovering the missing link between Morricone and Moroder. Thinking about how huge "Pistolero" could be on right-thinking dance floors makes me wish I still had a DJ gig.
"Pistolero" isn't Shango's sole show-stopper, although it's probably the disc's only full-on concession to the dancefloor. After a few variations on tribal-drum-driven, voodoo-dripping themes (including the rivetingly dark "Badimo"), Juno Reactor unleashes "Masters of the Universe". Don't look for He-Man or Skeletor in this piece of global futurism, in which an angry keyboard throb pushes drums to a breakneck pace, combining them with gorgeous female chanting (perhaps Natacha Atlas again?) and a ghostly refrain. Equally striking, if more subtle, is "Solaris", which begins as an ambient piece flavored by what sounds like a doudouk, then mixes in drums, chanting and gentle synthesizer swells, creating a feverish slow-burn. "Songs for Ancestors" ends the album in sprawling credit-roll style -- it's an eight minute epic of acoustic guitar, mournful vocals and a thundering In The Nursery-esque percussion track.
The rest of Shango won't nail you to the wall as easily as "Pistolero" will, but it's all stellar stuff, easily transcending the modest aims of so-called "dance" music. It's increasingly clear that, like one-time SPKer Graeme Revell, Ben Watkins is cutting his teeth in Juno Reactor. While Shango makes it clear that Juno Reactor deserves to be big, that success may be the start of something even bigger for Watkins.
