Future Trash is the solo art and music project of Adam Wiesner. Originally from Two Rivers, Wisconsin, Wiesner spent a number of years in the Green Bay scene before moving down to Milwaukee in 2021.

The project originated from a zine Wiesner created. “I went to UW-Green Bay for Art & Design and got really into making zines and stuff like that,” he explains. “The zine started from me scribbling and cutting a bunch of Andy Capp comics and then running them through my copier multiple times; it’s kind of experimental where it has a narrative and is meant to be read like a comic. Art and music all kind of goes together for me. I make music that I want to hear and that I think sounds cool; I approach it a lot like a design project.”

Sonically, Future Trash mixes elements of noisy post-punk and dark electronica. Wiesner continues about the project’s name, “I was thinking of the idea where when you have a painting on a wall in a gallery, you’re delaying its inevitable fall into a dumpster; like, what we value now is trash later. I also like the reverse of it, where a piece of trash like a soda can would be fascinating to people from back in time.”

He cites bands like The Urinals and The Fall as influences. “A lot of my songs are kind of abstract and minimalist with a psychedelic element,” Wiesner adds. “I use synthesizer and drum machine but I definitely identify more as a punk artist than an electronic artist; I’ve never been in a band before this project and just want to do it all by myself.”

Future Trash collaborated with poet Ken Appleton on a self-titled album back in 2017. “I was doing a lot of open mics in Green Bay where I was bringing things like tambourine and slide whistle on stage, and then I evolved it into bringing electronics,” Wiesner recalls. “Ken was doing his poetry and would request a band to play with him, and I was really inspired by his stuff and wanted to play a set while he read some poems. He’s a super nice guy and has a lot of interesting ideas around philosophy, science and religion. Our friend Brennan encouraged us to do an album together; basically it was a showcase of Ken’s poetry while I did the sounds and production and I mixed it to tape. The first side is 13 individual poems, and the second side is like a jam track of 13 or 14 songs more like what we were doing live. I’m really proud of it.”

Since then Future Trash has been slowly piecing together an album. “I’ve been working on it since before the pandemic and then it got delayed,” Wiesner shares. “But I’ve been writing more songs and making adjustments to songs lately.”

Adam Wiesner Also is also an avid photographer at local shows and has the idea to put out a calendar featuring his work in the near future.