Prison, Pixar And POGO: The Self-Made Perth Electro Act's Winding Road To The Top

One day, Nick Bertke found himself watching Alice In Wonderland. Stay with me - it gets cooler. 

Listening to the sounds of this 1951 Disney film, the music producer started noticing - really noticing - the timbre of Alice's voice; the animated flowers playing harps; the warped sound of strings recorded on vinyl.

So he took these fragments and worked them into a trippy electronic remix, which has so far garnered close to 20 million hits on YouTube.

"I love the idea of listening to a film in song-form on your iPod," Nick says about his viral creations. I love the concept of taking the fabric of that movie and reweaving it into a song. It's exciting — you never know what you're going to end up with."

Nick (who goes by the stage name POGO) has also sourced effects from films as varied as Pulp Fiction to Mary Poppins and Spirited Away. We're set to experience his trance beats in the physical world when he performs at VIVID on 10 Jun in Painting With Light.

"It's all about remixing these films live, and reinterpreting these movies on stage — it's going to be a hell of a lot of fun," he says of what's in store.

"I started remixing the 'error' message so people would think it was all planned and scripted — and everyone went crazy."

Nick is preparing to deliver newly mixed material from cult screen hits — think The Jungle Book, Pirates of the Caribbean, Breaking Bad and Scarface. The 28-year-old makes no attempt to conceal his affection for nostalgia, reconnecting with movies he watched on video as a kid: "You can re-experience those movies today in a completely different format. It really excites me."

Extracting sounds originally captured on analogue gear, Nick turns them into something new using his PC, speakers, soundcard and a mixing desk, riffing on the sonic subtleties of reel recording. "They don't record sounds for movies the way they used to," he laments. "There's a character to it and that's why I love using old films."

He won't reveal too much about the exact content of his VIVID gig, though he hints at reinforcements from lasers and lights. But sometimes, it's the most unpredictable performance that can send a crowd wild — and he knows this all too well (for better and worse).

"I played a show in Perth recently and I actually crashed my laptop. There was a big Windows 'error' message on the screen. Everyone was freaked out and terrified. So I started remixing the 'error' message so people would think it was all planned and scripted — and everyone went crazy. There's an energy you get from a live audience that you just don't get from a piece of software in front of you at home."

Nick landed his first big break in the industry ten years ago, when he was flown to San Francisco to meet executives at computer animation juggernaut Pixar (he rightly boasts about shaking the hands of Toy Story director John Lasseter, and the studio's president Edwin Catmull). Pixar tasked him with producing promotional materials for the DVD and Blu-ray release of Up, which he worked on from his home in Perth.

He's since been scouted by The Pokemon Company, Great Southern Rail, and Nickelodeon among other major clients, proving his relatively remote location on Australia's far side isn't a barrier to his success in music technology. "Without YouTube, I wouldn't really have a career. That's what skyrocketed it for me."

By 2011, Nick's efforts culminated in his Kaleidophonics tour in which he packed more than 30 gigs in the United States. His ventures didn't end too well. (And by not ending too well, I mean he was thrown in jail and spent about a month "trying not to drop the soap in the shower".)

The artist says two companies had set him up with the wrong visa. "I can't really describe what it's like to have your freedom taken away from you, and not being told when you're going to get it back," he reflects. "When you're in prison, you have to learn to control your mind or else you get panicky and start crawling the walls."

But he says the system "wasn't as bad as The Shawshank Redemption" and even praises the officers who he encountered during his stint.

He was eventually deported and banned from entering the states until 2021. But remarkably, he took a positive lesson away from his jail time. "It's definitely helped me to think more freely," he says. "[In prison] you have to learn how to let go of thoughts. That's what you do when you make music as well; you have to stop thinking about it and let it come through you.

"All the best stuff happens when I'm not thinking about it."