Aubergine MACHINE impressed earlier this month with “Hostage“, an infectious track that found the electro duo paying homage to their ’90s trip-hop/neo-soul influences. Now the duo of Ian Carey and Shanti Ellis are back at it with a cover of The Strokes’ track “Call It Fate, Call It Karma“, a track off the indie-rockers’ most recent album, 2013’s Comedown Machine. I found this cover particularly good, mainly because the track is one of my preferred later-era Strokes tracks (with a lush lo-fi production on the original that resembled the swaying tropical-pop of amiable Strokes-related project Little Joy) and also that Aubergine MACHINE’s electro-pop influences align well. They inject this song with a darker edge; while the melody is still intact, several wonderful production effects – like the bass-y deep-vocal reverberations and anthemic chirping – provide a club-ready feel. Shanti Ellis’ vocals again remind me favorably of collaborations between Röyksopp and female vocalists like Robyn and Lykke Li, such as in “The Girl and the Robot” and “Miss It So Much“. I don’t typically post covers, but Aubergine MACHINE transform this track into an entirely different yet worthwhile entity.
