Super Enjoy Started as a Lockdown Skate Crew. Its Ninth Release Mourns Singapore's Empty Strata Malls.

A Requiem For Strata Malls

Singapore's neighbourhood strata malls are dying quietly. These are the multi-storey retail blocks built for a mall culture that migrated decades ago to bigger, air-conditioned centers, leaving behind karaoke joints, tuition centers and one bubble tea stand doing all the work on the ground floor. That's the exact, unglamorous image Submersible built an entire EP around. Late Night Snack Run [ENJOY009], out August 28 on Singapore label Super Enjoy, is four tracks of dub techno the label describes as "a palimpsest of urban textures and heady warmth in the name of balmy dub," drawn from what its own liner notes call "forgotten neighbourhood strata malls and unwritten legacies."

It doesn't sound like a concept record chasing a concept. "Corridor" opens dusty and sample-heavy, more mood board than dancefloor tool. "Signalling Fault," the EP's most club-ready cut, is pitched by the label as "a dancefloor suggestion... for a smoky room of steady stragglers," which is about as accurate a description of 4am Singapore techno as this magazine has read all year. "Shisa" churns on percussive syncopation and synths that sound almost playful against the record's grey concrete mood.

From Skate Crew to Nine Records

Super Enjoy didn't start as a label. It started in early 2021, mid-lockdown, when Bongomann and El Professionel, then just learning to DJ, wanted, in Bongomann's own words, "a no frills, no pressure sitch to try things out," according to an interview with Bandwagon Asia. The crew solidified over skate sessions before it ever solidified over decks, then spent 2021 to 2023 throwing parties at Wild Pearl, ikigai and Cherry Discotheque, the same small-room, no-frills ethos as the tiny Haji Lane techno rooms this magazine has covered elsewhere in Singapore. A monthly residency on Bangkok Community Radio followed in March 2023 and is still running, more than 22 episodes deep.

The label side started in early 2024, almost as an afterthought to the parties. Sigmoid Fn's EP opened the catalogue as ENJOY001; Bongomann and fellow member Dexter Colt, who also produces for Darker Than Wax, followed with the Vaguehouse EP as ENJOY002. Late Night Snack Run is ENJOY009, nine records into a run that's barely two years old, from a crew whose opening plan was reportedly no plan at all.

No Streaming Yet, So Here's a Labelmate

Late Night Snack Run is Bandcamp-only for now: mastered by Singaporean ambient musician Kin Leonn, illustration by Leon Wan, design by Gen Yip. Neither Submersible nor the new EP have made it to Spotify or SoundCloud yet, so the closest thing to a preview is a cut from further back in the catalogue. Bongomann's own "Unconcerned," off his Fogworx EP, is embedded below and gives a fair sense of the label's low-lit, minimal register while the new record waits for a proper streaming release.

Whether Late Night Snack Run ever gets a Spotify listing or stays a Bandcamp artefact, the strata-mall framing is the more interesting bet: a Singapore techno record about the parts of the city its own tourism board doesn't photograph.

Cover artwork: official art for Submersible's Late Night Snack Run EP, illustration by Leon Wan, design by Gen Yip, via Super Enjoy's Bandcamp.