We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Alejandro Rodriguez. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Alejandro below.

Alejandro, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

This was initially used as a pseudonym for projects that we didn’t want our name attached to. Little music videos or photoshoots that were maybe problematic or lower quality. Directed by TRASH or Shot by TRASH. It felt funny and removed but still something I could see being an extension of my artistic pursuits. I had told Gamal about this and showed him the title card for one of the music videos and it said “This Is TRASH” and he said that it was hot and that should be the actual name of our brand/company. TRASH. Suddenly it felt edgy and different. I wanted some silly name like “Those Spanish Guys” or something similarly feckless but TRASH stood out. It very much painted the picture of what Gamal and I are bringing to the table in a creative sense.

Alejandro, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Alejandro – We like to think of ourselves as a one stop shop for artists. From handling the production to mixing and mastering services all the way to campaign development and branding and even creative direction and artist development.

Gamal – What sets us aside would definitely be our focus on artist development.

Alejandro – This process is the most time consuming and expensive and could yield absolutely nothing so most other agencies don’t even tackle it

Gamal – The best moments in music require a team that is dialed in from the music to the art, it’s all apart of one creative effort, we focus on making that creative process cohesive. We’ve seen projects that feel like a group of freelancers all working with indecently, whereas TRASH, the music informs the art and vice versa. So by the time a release hits your screen, we carefully curated the entire project from start to finish. We believe this is how it should be done – at the highest levels –

Have you ever had to pivot?

Gamal – This question is a bit hard to answer as our entire business model is based on pivoting in someway or another. Art is a moving target and in order to capture it properly you need to move with it. Every single goes through multiple rounds of revisions, edits and restructuring, every album lives with us for many months or years at a time and we watch it grow in front of us but are also responsible for the direction and speed of the growth. For us pivoting is a cornerstone of our process and necessary to making great music, art and artist.

A small example of a time we needed to pivot was when an artist we were working with could not leave the country she is studying in. In order to meet our deadline – I hopped on a plane to meet her and record her at her house. We made a make shift studio in her living room and spent a week recording. It’s something we’ve had to do many times but it is necessary to meet artist where they are both physically and creatively – It makes for a strong , resilient team and vision.

What’s been the best source of new clients for you?

Alejandro – Offering free services initially was a gem for us. Think of it akin to a free sample at a juice bar or a cafe. Before we officially launched, we decided to run a “case study period” which was essentially just TRASH but for free. This gave artists free access to pitching and campaigning and art direction and file administration and artworks and web dev. and literally everything else you could imagine (relating to music). That decision helped us build our portfolio but more importantly, it helped us build trust with those first few clients, that we still are working with to this day.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://trashdidthis.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/emptypinata | instagram.com/gamalabdu | instagram.com/thisistrash
• Other: https://open.spotify.com/user/31n5tjm35tmkfmavy5qgufztlhke?si=08f9c3c876ab458a

Image Credits

Gamal Abdu and Alejandro Rodriguez