Tuesday, January 18, 2011

The Saccharine Stylings of Pogo

The information age has helped create more than a few new sub-genres of music. With help from the Internet, it's also helped create more than a few new artists working in forms no one's really thought of as art before.

Nick Bertke or, known to his fans, Pogo, composes music with the use of nostalgia.

Or at least by cutting up nostalgic movies into their most potently sweet and bouncy parts. By sampling the sounds of characters rather than specific words and sentences, Pogo reconstructs films into catchy music. He's a surgeon with video and music editing tools.

After coming to the attention of the Internet with his moodily sweet Alice in Wonderland remix, the Perth native quickly gained an online following that any DJ or remix artist would envy.

One of my favorite works of video editing art is what he's done with The Secret Garden:



Nostalgia may be a powerful thing, but one can't bank on it forever. His music may be crafted with sentimentality, but Pogo's been busy. He's accepted work from Disney, Honda, and Showtime and looks as if he's done some work to expand his repertoire.

Pogo has now set his sites on a more international endeavor, "Remixing the World," starting with Johannesburg, South Africa:



Details for his next project can be found at his Kickstarter page, where the artist's next stop appears to be Tibet.