Big Data (aka Alan Wilkis) has created a 10-minute short film echoing the tech paranoia of Black Mirror or coming across like a Y2K version of cult Sixties British horror film Children Of The Damned.

In brief, a smart speaker (L1ZY) is delivered to a family’s doorstep, they start to find it incredibly useful in their lives (cheating in exams, dealing with school bullies etc.) until… it starts to take over their lives by ordering more versions of itself and hacking their personal data.

The production values are so high that a first viewing might not lead you to think this is actually promoting music. But that, conversely, is why it has such a strong impact. All there is to punctuate the narrative is a bumper between scenes with a synth riff (from a Big Data track) and the cartoon rendering of Big Data’s face. The track itself is introduced very briefly at the start when the mother asks L1ZY to play her favourite song and the son announces that he loves Big Data. (The name “Big Data 3.0” is also moulded into the casing of the L1ZY devices but, for the most part, it is very subtly done.)

The video was created by Ghost+Cow and got its premier at the Telluride Horror Film Festival, a clear indication that they had much grander ambitions for this beyond just being another music video.

“Music videos are essentially advertisements for a band’s music, so we wanted to disrupt the category by creating a piece of entertainment that communicated the entire album, not just one track,” Ghost+Cow told marketing site Muse by Clio. “We also wanted to communicate the overarching AI concept of Big Data’s upcoming album.”

They added, “[Alan] uses the L1ZY during his live shows, and even the album art is the concept drawings for the L1ZY speaker. We fell in love with the concept and the idea of a non-music music video—is it a short film, a music video or a commercial? It’s all three.”

It is unquestionably one of the most creative and memorable campaigns we have seen all year.