Aili & Orson sing about phone addiction in Japanese for ‘Keitai ケータイ’
The electro-pop duo’s lead single from their second album comes with a surreal sushi restaurant video where smartphones are on the menu
The new music video for Aili & Orson’s ‘Keitai ケータイ' takes place in a surreal sushi restaurant, shot with a mix of live action and green screen.
Smartphones get fried in pans, earbuds are chopped up as ingredients…it all (hopefully) starts to make sense once you hear what the song is about: the way smartphones interrupt conversation.
Aili & Orson put it plainly: “The smartphone is everywhere. It lives in our palms, our pockets and on tables. We take it with us to the toilet (like a best friend), the bedside table and our cars, and it interrupts human interaction constantly.”
They continue: “More often than not, we check our smartphones in the middle of a conversation. Without any particular goal, we just gaze at the screen as if at any time now something more important than speaking to the person in front of us can happen. We’ve outsourced the way we think and interact with people to companies whose profits depend on our endless scrolling habits.”
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That message arrives in Japanese. The track, out via Eskimo Recordings, is sung entirely in the language, and “Keitai” itself means “mobile phone”.
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Behind the vocals, warm orchestral synths sit alongside drum machines that recall nineties video game soundtracks, giving the song a bright, retro and slightly off-kilter feel.
It also marks a new chapter for the duo, as ‘Keitai ケータイ' is the lead single from their second album, due 2027.
Watch the music video for ‘Keitai ケータイ' below.
Amira Waworuntu is Mixmag Asia’s Managing Editor, follow her on Instagram.
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