[vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_column_text]Everyone loves classic Disney movies: The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, Pocahontas, Tarzan, Hercules, Mulan. What do they all have in common? Awesome music. Music has always played a crucial part of Disney’s best films. Songs like the Circle of Life remind us of our childhood and make us want to go back and watch The Lion King.

One music producer, however, is taking the familiarity of your favorite Disney movies and using it to create new, other-worldly musical creations that you have to hear for yourself.

‘Pogo’ burst onto YouTube seven years ago with his first video, Alice, which has garnered more than 14 million views. In it, he takes sounds sampled from ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and arranges them into a magical piece of electronic music that makes you wonder if you’re dreaming.

Since then, he has continued to produce remix videos, gaining a total of nearly 120 million views.

Although his Disney remixes are some of his most popular, Pogo has also done videos for movies like Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and even Pulp Fiction.

You can find all of Pogo’s music on his YouTube channel, here, as well as on iTunes and Spotify, as well as an exclusive interview below.

Q: How did you first become involved in music production?
A: When I was 10 living in New Zealand, my music teacher had put together a MIDI studio at his house and my Mom dropped me off every Wednesday to play with it. A few years later after I moved to Western Australia, I discovered a Playstation game called Music, and I’d sit for hours every day making tracks. Later I discovered FLStudio for PC which totally blew my mind. It was the first time I had heard of Low Pass filters, VST instruments, ASIO drivers, etc. I didn’t know what I was doing, but it quickly became my number #1 hobby for the next several years.

Q: Your remixes have a very original sound; do you have any musical influences that have helped shape your unique style?
A: I think my tracks are very influenced by artists like Akufen and Prefuse 73. I discovered Akufen when I was a teenager, who made music entirely out of sounds he recorded with an old radio tuner. Prefuse 73 is notorious for inventing his own languages with sound and music. His tracks are simply unreal. I’m also a big fan of Deep House artists like Efdemin and Moomin, reggae from Dennis Bovell, classic Jazz from Al Jarraeu.

Q: How do you decide what source material to use when you start a new project?
A: It’s a very musical process. If I’m not using synthesizers like Sylenth, Massive or Diva, I’ll explore through the 35,000 sounds I’ve recorded so far to create what I’m looking for. When it comes to Pogomixing a game or movie, it’s about what resonates with me — Sesame Street and The Fresh Prince were staples of my childhood. I’ve also shot many of my own videos, including Kenya Chords in Kenya, Kadinchey in Bhutan, Joburg Jam in South Africa, and The Ghan in Eastern Australia.

Q: You’ve had the opportunity to work with a number of companies and campaigns; of those experiences, do you have a favorite?
A: Yes! I’ve worked on exciting projects with The Pokemon Company, Walt Disney, Nickelodeon and Showtime to name a few. My absolute favorite so far is Pyscho Soup, a Pogoism of the hugely successful Borderlands 2 game from Gearbox Software. I needed to place a lot of time and research into how to extract sounds from the game, disable the UI, slow down time, change the time of day, change the camera angle and speed, etc. In the end, it was like being a filmmaker in the world of Borderlands and I could seriously make a video to call my own. The work was enormous despite producing most of the track from scratch, but in the end I was playing a video game for a whole month. Can’t complain about that.

Q: Are you working on any new projects at the moment?
A: Absolutely. I’m currently preparing for a live show in Paris in October, my Pogomix of Skyrim is still a work in progress, and I’m determined to do something very special with Star Trek: The Next Generation.

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