Pogo

Music

Nick Bertke, under his band name Pogo, has produced tracks using samples from films and TV shows such as Pulp Fiction. He has also sampled from other sources, such as field recordings for his project Remix the World. Remix the World was an ambitious project, consisting of all original content. Bertke shot real world footage and then used those sounds and images to capture the essence of the places he visited. The Real World Remix was shot in Kenya, South Africa, Bhutan, and Perth (AU).

Bertke is best known for his use of video sampling to produce music videos, which he uploads on the video-sharing website YouTube. As of October 2017, his most popular YouTube video is Alice, made of samples of Disney's animated film Alice in Wonderland, with more than 20 million views. In 2010, his music video Gardyn, created from footage of his mother working in her garden, was juried along with 24 other YouTube videos for an exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. On 29 September 2016, Pogo released a song called "Trumpular" on SoundCloud which consisted of quotes from Republican nominee, and later President, Donald Trump.

Pogo's music is used on the conservative YouTube talk show Louder with Crowder, hosted by Steven Crowder. Various music of his is used coming back from commercial breaks.

Personal life

On his September 2011 US tour, Bertke was arrested and taken into custody for three weeks due to the lack of a proper work visa, and is prohibited from re-entering the United States until 2021.

Political activity

Bertke was criticized for a 2015 video that derided feminists as gold diggers and repeated misogynist arguments against women's rights. He later claimed that it was a "social experiment".

In a YouTube livestream that was uploaded in 2016, Bertke stated that he has a "fairly robust resentment of the gay community". On the topic of the Orlando nightclub shooting, a terrorist attack at a gay bar in Florida in 2016, he said, "It amazes me to see the West welcoming a culture through the floodgates that wants gays dead. I think that's fantastic". Bertke later claimed to have no hate for the gay community and also cited his Asperger syndrome and bipolar disorder as contributing factors. He stated that the video was made in bad taste and that he never intended for it to go public, although he also stated that he was trying to "impersonate the far-right and create hysteria", noting that the video was made around the time of the 2016 American election. YourEDM compared his "homophobic rhetoric" to the 2015 video, which he similarly tried to explain as a social experiment. Writing for The Verge, Megan Farokhmanesh saw this explanation as a transparent attempt at plausible deniability. As a result of this video coming to light, Disney removed Bertke's songs from a restaurant playlist at its California Adventure location due to pressure from fans.

Discography

Albums

• Texturebox (30 December 2010)
• Wonderpuff (27 June 2011)
• Forgotten Fudge (2 November 2013)
• Star Charts (22 December 2014)
• Kindred Shadow (11 June 2015)
• Weightless (30 December 2016)
• Ascend (22 February 2018)
• Quantum Field (29 December 2018)

EPs

• Wonderland (28 May 2007)
• Broken Beats (2008)
• Table Scraps (2008)
• Weave and Wish (22 March 2009)
• Deeper Down the Rabbit Hole (30 November 2010)
• Fluctuate (5 January 2014)
• Perfect Chaos (21 May 2014)
• Younghood (8 June 2014)