Almost all of the sounds used in Trash were recorded from the television. A small number of sounds, derived form short wave carrier noise, were also used.
The material used in Trash focuses upon 'junk' TV. The speech fragments used throughout this piece are frequently presented partially concealed from the listener through the use of mix-masking, fragmentation or by their sheer density. Specific fragments may be discerned by some but not by others on any particular listen. This lends their semantic meaning a throwaway nature. In this way attention is drawn, not to any particular fragment, but to the overall tone of the material.
A problem that arose when faced with the source materials was how to accurately represent those materials, yet at the same time create something with intrinsic sonic beauty while recognizing that those materials could at best be described as ugly and functional. I was able to resolve this problem by imbuing my sources with resonant qualities through use of computer based sound processing techniques. Sound processing was used in an 'all or nothing' manner: the degree of transformation of source sounds is either extreme or extremely subtle. I could see no point in blurring semantic meanings using elaborate sound processing - semantic meanings are therefore either untouched by processing or completely negated.
Trash was also an experiment in disproportionate structuring. This aspect will become apparent upon listening to the piece.