No October playlist is complete without Bauhaus’ spooky standard “Bela Lugosi’s Dead,” and now a rather unexpected gang of lads has taken the goth classic out for a spin. A fresh sheen of hypnotic atmospherics arrives via the dance-pop cauldron of EMF, the British band responsible for one of the all-time greatest songs of the 20th century in the forever unfuckwithable “Girl of an Age.”
Having recently released new tunes and hopping across the Atlantic for a joint West Coast tour with Spacehog — let’s get a Boston date locked down, gents — EMF have now provided us with a seasonally-appropriate cover of the timeless midnight anthem that ricochets within a tight ball of sonic energy.
Even Bauhaus’ David J has signed off on it, writing: “A colony of bats burst out from the Forest of Dean to the soundtrack of ‘Bela Lugosi’s Dead’ fed through a contemporary minimalist dystopian filter. The tight rhythmic dub echoes making for a propulsive drive that sees this compact and condensed cover rush past the finishing line in misty Transylvania.”
And EMF vocalist James Atkin relays a tale of his youth that feels very relatable, adding: “At the local pub in our teenage years was a jukebox. The go-to record that eventually got worn out by us was Bauhaus’ ‘Bela Lugosi’s Dead.’ To be able to revisit this and do our own EMF-inspired cover version is a real treat for us, a real Halloween treat, that is. It may come as a surprise, but we embraced true goth culture in our youth.”
Once a goth, always a goth.