Thursday, May 1, 2008

Sunsonic - Melting Down On Motor Angel

As The Flowerpot Men, Ben Watkins and Adam Peters brought a dark edge to 80s synthpop. Upon signing to Polydor they changed their name to Sunsonic (presumably because there had already been a band called the Flowerpot Men in the 60s) and released a single album, Melting Down On Motor Angel (a Flowerpot Men track that did not appear on the album, oddly enough) in 1990, before they split up and Ben Watkins went on to become Juno Reactor. Melting Down marks the middle ground between the rock-influenced synthpop of the 80s and the full-fledged techno of the 90s. Here is that album, the first of several projected Ben Watkins Before Juno Reactor posts. (Or here.)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Interesting. To me, this and the second Hitmen album proves that Mr Watkins is a far better songwriter than you should think by listening to Flowerpot Men and Juno Reactor.

Fantod said...

Most of the songs on that Hitmen album were written by Pete Glenister; Watkins co-wrote two songs and wrote just one by himself. Here everything is just credited to Sunsonic, so there's no telling who did what. Agreed that Juno Reactor doesn't deliver much in the way of songwriting!