'Music is not, by its nature, rational or analytic; it offers us not argument but experience, and for a moment - for moments - that experience involves ideal time, an ideal defined by the integration of what is routinely kept separate - the individual and the social, the mind and the body, change and stillness, the different and the same, already past and still to come, desire and fulfillment.'

~Simon Frith, in 'Performing Rites; On the value of popular music' (1996)

I fulfilled an ambition of mine last weekend when I saw Pogo (aka Nick Bertke, aka Fagottron) perform live in NYC. Pogo remixes movies, messing around not just with the picture (usually compressing an entire film into 3-4 minutes) but also creating a new soundtrack for the edit using samples taken from the original film (both speech and ambient sounds, including music). His core work tends to focus on iconic movies, old and new, many skewed towards kids' movies. These include 'Mary Poppins', 'Pirates of the Caribbean', 'Star Wars', 'Harry Potter', 'Toy Story', 'Up', 'Terminator', 'Snow White', 'The Wizard of Oz', 'Alice', and 'Willy Wonka'. Recently he's started mixing films soundtracked from real life, including 'Gardyn', a film he made about his mother's garden (& her love for it) in Australia (more on that here). Pogo was recently featured in the YouTube Play Biennial of Creative Video, which culminated at the Guggenheim in NYC (highlights of that fairly amazing evening can be found in this video; in fact, the exterior projections were pretty special too).

Here, aside from urging you to take a look at the live show below and make up your own mind, I want to pick up on a few of the reasons why I think he's worthy of a place in the Pantheon of Awesomeness.

1. He allows us to be kids again, just for a moment. In mining some of the richest of our childhood recollections in such a powerful way, combining visuals and music, Pogo re-activates residual childhood memories that may have lain dormant for decades. Of all the arts, music probably has the strongest capacity to move us emotionally; when spliced with visuals which we all have burned into our memories, Pogo's mixes slice strait through the billions of mundane moments recorded by our brains over the years, and we're suddenly ten years-old again. Which is, of course, absolutely magic.

2. He creates completely new work but pays homage to the original. I have no idea whether Pogo's asked pernission to use any of the material he cuts up and repackage (although he's worked with both Pixar and Disney so one assumes their lawyers are not trying to destroy him; I hope not). In any case, the remixes are not just re-interpretations of pre-existing content, they're brilliant celebrations of what makes those originals timeless. Furthermore, he adds a new layer. He makes us aware of the magic within the sounds that surround us. When you've watched a few of his films you begin to re-hear reality, and hear new possibilities.

3. He distills the original films into killer bite-sized portions. The arch-summarizer at work; somehow he manages to boil down two hours worth of movie into a rich, resonant, usually euphoria-drenched 7" video single. 

4. He solves the two decade-old problem of what to look at when you're at an electronica gig. Having been to more live electronic music events than I can remember (funnily enough), and certainly during the 1990s when I completed my PhD, way more than was healthy, it's always been painful to watch the clumsy attempts to entertain the swaying masses with someone resembling a 'show'. Pogo knocks that into touch. Yes, of course it's still unnerving watching him (and the support band guy before him) twitch about behind his MacBook Pro like a marionette on speed. But going to a gig to watch an hour-long video that has been put together with meticulous care and attention (versus just Mandelbrot fractals and timelapsed sunrises) is mighty refreshing.

5. He puts on gigs where kids are encouraged to turn up. Maybe it's my age, maybe it's the fact that I now have two kids (who were gutted to find they weren't allowed to come along), maybe it's because I'm a softie. Maybe all of the above. But it was a glorious sight seeing kids at a gig in the middle of NYC. It's kind of silly that this isn't more common. 

Huge thanks to NinjaVanishQuickly for posting this entire Pogo show (below) from last week at the Black Cat in Washington D.C. Although in five chunks, it's high quality, and it gives you a real sense of how Pogo's work feels 'live'.

OK, I'm off to watch 'The Wizard of Oz' again.

'Helen pushed her way out during the applause. She desired to be alone. The music had summed up to her all that had happened or could happen in her career. She read it as a tangible statement, which could never be superseded. The notes meant this and that to her, and they could have no other meaning, and life could have no other meaning. She pushed right out of the building, and walked slowly down the outside staircase, breathing the autumnal air, and then she strolled home.'

~ Helen Schlegel, leaving the Albert Hall mid-way through Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, in E.M. Forster's 'Howard's End' (1910)

After seeing that, if you fancy some individual highlights, here are a few of my favourites.

More about Pogo here.

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Pogo has done it again. Thanks to @LenKendall for pointing this one out.

More details of what seems an extraordinary project appear below, from Pogo's YouTube page.

You can also support his attempt at producing the next installment in Tibet at Kickstarter.

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This is remix of sights and sounds that I filmed around the city of Johannesburg, South Africa. This marks the beginning of my World Remix project!

World Remix is my idea for an upcoming album which would expand upon my live-action remixing concept, first displayed to much fanfare in my track and video Gardyn. The goal of my project is to travel the world capturing sights, sounds, voices and chords, and use them to compose and shoot a track and video for each major culture of the world. It will be funded solely by you the listener, and will be released worldwide on CD, DVD, and on my website PogoMix.net. I am deeply inspired by the films Baraka and Koyaanisqatsi, and hope to produce the best cinematography and music I humanely can throughout each project.

Every remix will be financed by pledges at KickStarter, funds made by the remix before it, and by prepayments for the next upcoming remix. If you purchase remix #001 or prepay for the upcoming remix #002, it sends me and my crew to our next destination to produce remix #002. With the release of each remix, I will state a fixed financial goal for the next destination which will be publicly viewable as a new project here on KickStarter.

Working with major labels, studios and corporations often carries with it a number of obligations which greatly affect the integrity and general direction of the project in question. Trying to turn my own idea into a mutually beneficial deal that preserves the integrity of the project is virtually impossible. Besides, remixing real people, cultures and religions carries the responsibility to properly represent someone's way of being. My world remix concept has peaked the intrigue of various labels, studios and TV channels -- but as always with corporate deals, the dollars come with strings attached. In reality, the album would likely be skewered towards night-life and commercialized metropolitan districts. It would stray completely from my initial concept, and wouldn't make for compelling material even if I did sell out.

The world remix project is going to employ a unique method of funding -- an incremental finance structure. Every track will be financed by the funds generated from sales of the track before it, and by prepayments for the track next to be released. so to put it quite literally, you the listener will be the sponsor! In a nutshell, if you purchase track #001, it sends me and my crew to our next destination to produce track #002. With the release of each track, I will state a fixed financial goal for the next destination, and provide a publicly viewable status of how close we are to reaching that goal. Not only are you helping our cause, but you're supporting me directly to produce a quality track and film production. Plus, every supporter will be formerly credited as an Associate Producer, earning them a discount of the full CD and DVD when the project is completed. Remember when people had to pay for music regardless of quality? Remember when most of that money went to a posh record label?

If you the listeners stop contributing, then so must I. Your opinions are important to me, so if it's apparent this project is losing appeal, then it is not meant to be.

The crew will usually consist of two people. I will be operating all of the camera equipment, while my faithful manager Bryant Randall will be manning the sound equipment in addition to documenting the project behind the scenes. We will almost always have a fixer to navigate for us and translate the local dialects, and often there will be need for a grip to hold reflectors, soft boxes, dump footage, etc. While making music on location will be a vital part of capturing a culture, I will use our sounds and footage to compose primarily at my studio in Perth, Western Australia.

Perfect pre-weekend viewing. Just posted yesterday, Pogo's newest project. Wishery comprises vocal syllables, musical chords and sound effects recorded from the 1937 Disney classic 'Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs'. It's ace.

If you like this, take a look at some of his previous work on YouTube, here.

See a load more genius at: http://www.youtube.com/user/Fagottron