Artist profile: Pogo

We've come across some talented people in our travels but it has to be said this artist is one of the most amazing we've experienced...well...ever. Introducing: Pogo.

The 21-year-old Perth-based wunderkind is a music and video master who blew us away the first time we stumbled upon his remixing wizardry on Disney classic Alice in Wonderland. We just knew we had to track the man down for a chat. Enjoy.



EC: Explain a bit about what you do.

Pogo: I am an eletronic music producer with an education in 3D animation and visual effects. I am most noted for my work recording small sounds from a specific scene or film, and sequencing them to form a new piece of music along with a video composed of the corresponding clips. I am also successful in providing design and video production services as a freelancer.

EC: How did you get started with your music and what ideally would you like to achieve with it?

Pogo: My fascination with music came about when I was two years of age. My folks had bought me a desktop tape recorder, electing the cassette tape as the centrepiece of my free time for the rest of my childhood. I was denied lessons in drumming under my tutor's belief that I didn't need them, and later received practical lessons in piano playing and MIDI arrangement from my music teacher in school. My friends and I found success as a rock band in which I drummed, winning several competitions and earning a position in the Pepsi Smoke-Free Rock Quest of 1999. When I was 12, I discovered the game 'Music 2000' for Playstation and knew instantly that music production would be a hobby of mine for many years to come. Today, I use Audition and FLStudio, and my work can be found on websites including MySpace, YouTube and Last.fm. What I hope to achieve with my music is enjoyment and inspiration, and to know that it's affecting the lives of others so positively is an inspiration in its self.



EC: Explain a little of your creative process.

Pogo: My first and most important goal of all is to produce a track that I can listen to regularly and enjoy. This process is all about composing with my ears and finding sounds that I can love individually. Pulling a track together can take me anything from a few days to a few weeks. It depends largely on whether or not I'm in the zone, which oddly seems to occur mostly during the late hours of the night. Once I have developed my track substantially, I download it to my MP3 player and listen to it throughout my day. This phase is about enjoying and evaluating my track from the perspective of a casual listener, and it's often here that the imperfections and annoyances of my track stand out. After switching back and forth between production and listening modes, it's then time to produce a video. This is a process that requires a different way of thinking. When I'm editing, I'm constantly evaluating things like meaning, flow of motion, framing continuity and so on. It's a misconception that my track is the product of my video, when the idea of producing both at the same time would be chaos.

EC: Do you have specific inspirations? i.e. people, literature, film, philosophy, dreams etc?

Pogo: I'm inspired to make music by the sounds I hear and the films in which I hear them. You might say my work is about capturing the element of a film that inspires me, and extruding it into a piece of music. It's kind of like shining light through a prism. When I'm writing and directing, my inspiration is my idea. This doesn't last long, so it's important for me to act quickly while the energy is still there. During my film studies in 2007, my tutor was a dedicated and learned film maker by the name of Burleigh Smith, who was of some inspiration to me as well. He proved to me the importance of persistance, optimism and assertion in bringing one's ideas to the screen. Ever since my childhood days playing 3D Movie Maker, the one thing that has always fueled my desire to write and direct is the film I'm watching in my head. The vision is everything.

EC: What's the best thing about being creative?

Pogo: To be creative is to endow yourself with the power to breathe life into the figments of your imagination. I can't think of anything more magnificent about being creative. I think creativity is one of man's most precious qualities. It's an energy that is largely responsible for fueling some of the greatest enrichments and advances of our society. One of the most important goals we should have as a society is to preserve and encourage man's will to create, enrich and inspire. When I witness my music encouraging somebody to be creative, I couldn't possibly hope to achieve anything greater as an artist.



For more Pogo you can jump here, hop over here or even bounce up in here.


EC - Style is a Language