Go behind the scenes of Hak Baker’s powerful ‘Telephones 4 Eyes’ video

Hak Baker has debuted the video for new track ‘Telephones 4 Eyes’, which sees the Isle of Dogs star exploring the grotesque to deliver a powerful protest against the perils of modern technology.

The latest video, directed by frequent Fontaines D.C. collaborator Hugh Mulhern, uses AI to mutate a series of characters. The spectacle becomes increasingly sinister and gory as Hak eventually emerges from a human stomach.

While the track itself was produced by Speedy Wunderground’s Dan Carey, video creator Mulhern explained how Baker was open to creating the most otherworldly spectacle possible.

“The brief was wonderfully open and Hak wanted people to push it as far as they could, but I’m always a bit sceptical of people when they say that so I gave Hak a buzz and asked him ‘how far can we go?’ and he said ‘go as mad as you can’,” Mulhern explained to Rolling Stone UK.

“If I told you I had an initial rationale for everything in the video and it was all carefully figured out I’d be lying. In truth it was one of those ideas that came together almost instantaneously. I think that’s to do with how clear Hak’s ideas are in the song. Tetsuo the Iron man was a key image and I also think the inside of Dan Carey’s studio played a part in inspiring our phone thief’s lab. HR Giger meets Abe’s Odyssey circa this weird stop motion cartoon called Mr Bumpy.”

The video also features a central performance from a local actor friend of Baker’s called Jack, who ‘didn’t hold back for a second and was running around screaming in tongues without hesitation’.

After working on the shoot with a team that included cinematographer Eoin McLoughlin and producer Alex Handschuh, Mullen admitted feeling in a “bit of a daze”. 

“Things went off the deep end in the final few days of the video. We sent some stuff over to Dom (infinite.vibes) to create AI sequences stylistically informed by the stop motion animation and what he sent back far exceeded my expectations. It’s my favourite thing I’ve made to date and all I wanna do now is expand on the techniques we experimented with.”

Of the track, Hak Baker added: “Telephones fell out me head like a naughty nursery rhyme. It’s been prophesied – it’s how I felt and I still feel. Currently everyone’s pissed off and being fed trash thru their ‘timeline’. It’s all burning down in front of our eyes anyway so may as well take some time to yourself and try to find some peace.

“Telephones is an everyday, everyone problem. I just want to incite a reaction from the song by prodding on how cycle-like our existence will be if we allow it to be.

“A.I and phone robberies are just some of our daily extremities. Why not tie it to a nutty punk infused slammer and shock people into putting their phones down for fuck sake? It’s all a lie anyways.”