In order to cut through the noise of our contemporary digital moment, you first have to see the noise, and that’s precisely what the video for Cars & Trains’ “The Map Becomes the Territory” seems intent on doing.

Cars & Trains’ song “The Map Becomes the Territory” takes a modernist tale by Borges and gives it post-modern reframing where it becomes — to my ears — about the modern world where the simulation has taken primacy. The video that Tom Filepp self-directed similarly combines the ASCII aesthetic of early computing to make a commentary on our contemporary, post-modern moment.

We asked Filepp to sum up the song and the video for us, and he puts it better than we can: “The song is inspired by a Borges short story. It’s about nationalism, the arbitrariness of borders and all the misinformation and noise that stems from that. The video is supposed to convey all the noise and garbage we’re subjected to on a daily basis in the name of nationalism and whatever manufactured identities that flow from that.”

Check out the video here and stay on the lookout for the full album Fictions, coming out on October 6th.