Mona Lisa Overdrive Remix

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I’m excited to share something special with you all, a remix of Mona Lisa Overdrive, reimagined by Reaky Reason.

Some of you may already know Reaky’s work, including a powerful reinterpretation of Navras. This track has always carried a certain weight, and in Reaky’s hands it’s been given a fresh intensity and perspective that feels both respectful and boldly new.

For Reaky, this remix is deeply personal. He’s loved Mona Lisa Overdrive ever since first encountering it during The Matrix Reloaded,  a moment that clearly left a lasting imprint. That kind of connection is exactly what makes a remix powerful.

The original track itself holds a special place for me. It was the very first piece I was asked to write for The Matrix Reloaded. I remember being called out to Los Angeles in January 2003, tasked with finding a studio, which led me to an extraordinary place called The Paramour.

The Paramour  in Silverlake wasn’t just a studio, it was an experience. A vast, hauntingly beautiful mansion with a history that seemed to seep through the walls. Built for Ramon Novarro, the first great Latin romantic film star,  it carries within its walls the residue of longing, glamour, and something darker, less easily named. Once a gathering place for old Hollywood stars, Errol Flynn, David Niven, Humphrey Bogart, Anthony Quinn, and W.C. Fields…, it carried an atmosphere that was impossible to ignore.

There were long nights in enormous rooms, strange noises & echoes with underground passage ways filled with art and objects, the sense that the past was always close by. Bob Dylan recorded there,  Fiona Apple was in one of the small apartments recording her album "Extraordinary Machine", films had been shot there,  it is alive with 4th dimensions.

That environment became the backdrop to the writing of Mona Lisa Overdrive, and I think some of that energy made its way into the music.

To hear it now, years later, transformed through someone else’s passion and imagination that’s a rare and rewarding thing.

I hope you enjoy this new version as much as I have enjoyed thundering it out to dance crowds.

Stay Strange, Stay Kind

Keep feeling for the pulse beneath the noise.

Left To Right

Wiggs (Guitar), Josh Drums), Liliana (Opera Singer), Virna (Singer/Dancer), Ben (Does nothing), Marc (Percussion), Amir (Guitar)

"Let The Flowers Grow" Pete Murphy & Boy George, Juno Reactor Remix

Sometimes I find myself chasing a sound endlessly that feels half-remembered, half-invented, something hidden in the folds of a song that refuses to stay still. When I stepped into the world that Boy George and Pete Murphy

had woven in Let the Flowers Grow, it felt like entering a world built from shadows and old longing. I didn’t plan to remake anything. I only meant to remix. But the lyrics began whispering back, asking to be unsettled, stretched, reborn. And so I followed it into its darker corners, usually I don’t like to rewrite all the music , only keeping the vocals, but letting it unravel and reassemble felt the only way I could work on the track.

There was one line that kept circling me “I’m the heartbeat of the city, in the shadows I make my home…” That lyric became the compass, the pulse I stitched everything around. I could see them in a Blade Runner city breathing behind them, the neon signs, the hidden spaces, the people that insist on growing where no sun reaches. The remix became my way of answering that line, of honouring its truth. A small confession wrapped in noise and bloom.

And then came the final section, what was the original chorus, waiting in a neglected room at the back of the house: “I’ve been changing, mumma don’t know, let her tears fall, and let the flowers grow.” I’ll admit, those words didn’t catch me at first. They felt too bare, too exposed, like something overheard through a half-open door. But then, without warning, they hit me with the force of something painfully, universally human. A vulnerability too honest to ignore. And when it struck, the music began writing itself, as if that lyric had been sitting patiently, knowing it would make its claim. In that moment, the remix found its final shape, half lament, half liberation, letting its flowers grow out of the quiet ache of being changed beyond what anyone, even a mother, can fully see.

Remix released on Metropolis Records.

stay strange, stay kind,

and keep listening for the pulse beneath it all.

"Beyond the Infinite"

Released 30 years ago october 1995

Simon Watkins artwork

The album was written in a crumbling warehouse in Shoreditch long before anyone could buy a latte there. Back then, Shoreditch still smelled of soot and old paperbacks, still clung to its Dickensian bones if you scratched beneath the dirt.

Kubrick films looped endlessly in that place. Especially “2001, A Space Odyssey”. The title came from its final chapter, “Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite”, a doorway into the unknown that felt eerily similar to what we were trying to do with sound.

The core group was small: myself, Mike Maguire, Stefan Holweck, Johann Bley, and a Turnip the Swede.

Ben - Mike - Steffan

Pic Ronnie Randall

Mike deserves special mention. He wasn’t a musician in the traditional sense, but he was one of the top DJs of the time sharp instincts, no ego, and a laser-guided ear for what truly mattered. That gave Juno Reactor an edge others didn’t have. I met Mike at Greyhound Records before Juno Reactor even had a name. He adored the “Psycho Slaphead” 12" vinyl, 100 copies made! And we clicked instantly. Our first track together was “High Energy Protons”, more of an explosion than a beginning.

Otto the Barbarian — my Jack Russell and unofficial engineer — patrolled the studio with devout seriousness.

And Nahoko, the tape op I’d met on a KLF film shoot on Jura Scotland, kept us fed and occasionally sane. She later confessed that the studio was haunted. She wasn’t joking. It felt entirely plausible, especially on her acid.

What truly shaped “Beyond the Infinite” was our desire to feed heads on the dance floor and vanish the rulebook. Throw away all blueprints. Burn the map.

We blended industrial edges, jungle loops, cinematic atmospheres, tribal drumming, wild samples, and huge dynamic shifts. At the time, most electronic music stayed obediently in its lane. We didn’t want a lane. Still don’t.

Bowl Court Studio after the refit by Robert Trunz

Everything was recorded live to a DAT machine, long takes, hands on the desk, pushing buttons, riding faders, slamming reverbs and delays in real time. Instinct first, perfection second. That raw collision of tape, computer, and chaos gave the album a pulse most other records didn’t have then.

Originally, it was meant for NovaMute, but it found a better home with Simon Ghahary and Robert Trunz at the beginning of “The Blue Room” label. Robert brought not just support but new worlds,  Mabi Thobejane, Amampondo,  a rhythm and heartbeat that would later shape the global, cinematic Juno Reactor sound people now know through “Bible of Dreams”.

Looking back, “Beyond the Infinite” joined the underground electronic scene; it tilted it. Nudged it. Maybe even cracked it open a little. It helped shift trance into something that wasn’t merely trance, something still searching for its name. A music that felt alive, unpredictable, and strangely soulful.

stay strange, stay kind,

and keep listening for the pulse beneath it all.