DJ Subaru returns to Palms Trax’s CWPT with ‘Dog’, showcasing three tracks of offbeat dancefloor material that encompasses throbbing italo, sticky indie dancefloors and snarling, timeless punk. Title track ‘Dog’ reunites DJ Subaru with regular vocal collaborator Chopper Johnson, delivering a gratifying sermon of canine defiance to suit Subaru’s razor-sharp motorik disco, whose pumping bassline and angular guitar licks prove irresistible to dancers.
It might sound like an overlooked European dance record from 1985, but “Surrender” is a catchy Pop oriented production with strong influences from Italodisco and HiNRG, written and produced entirely from scratch by Benny Howell (aka DJ Subaru) and his friend Bella Quirin. Innocent and charming lyrics over 120’s BPM drum machine and a simple melody that you’ll be humming in the back of your mind for days to come. The remix on the B-side by Castro takes a darker turn into what almost sounds like a Techno version with heavy dubbed out effects taking the “Surrender” theme through an unhinged Ketamine flanger vortex.
DJ Subaru makes an accomplished production debut on CWPT with ‘Lots of Love’. DJ Subaru instinctively mines the expressive, outsider strains of disco, Italo and pop pleasures in their record bag, revealing an EP that throbs with the pleasures, pain and potential of a life in strobes and smoke. Vocalist and muse Tiss Vampiric emerges from London’s shadowy underground to lend their voice to the brooding, disco-Gothic track, ‘My Love’. Stalking a moody paradise amongst DJ Subaru’s EBM-oriented synthesizers, their baroque lyrics conjure an atmosphere that bridges the energies of subversive pioneers such as Soft Cell and Ministry, a sensual maze where denial only leads to more devotion, as well as more dancing. Keeping the lights dim but brightening the corners, the prolific cosmic disco pioneer Prins Thomas reinvigorates his legendary ‘Diskomiks’ approach for a euphoric remix of ‘My Love’.
The Hipodrome Of Music 