Let’s break some ice. Who are you? Where are you from? What style of music do you create?
We are British (myself – songwriter and producer, and herself – vocalist supremo) and the music style is most recognisable as ours when we’re making either beautiful, dreamy lullaby type vibes, or funky retro-but-modern grooves, or both together. We also often find ourselves bursting into hard rock, all flavours of electronica and dance music and anything else that inspires. I’d say genre wise we have no boundaries other than what we can make sound good, which we’ll always try to stretch.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPYYMAlN0GU
What else do you create? I noticed a library of story books on your website complete with 3D versions and all that… friggin awesomesauce!!
As well as a songwriter and producer I also love writing fiction, creating artwork, software programming and any other creativity that inspires me. Before I thought up Azrock & Pogo all these creative impulses were looking like an endless jumbled list of unfulfilled ideas, so I had this great idea to just do one project that I can focus all of that into – which is what Azrock & Pogo is, and now I’m very happy to say it will probably keep me engaged for the rest of my life.
The story is about two fictional characters (Azrock and Pogo), who both have a complete love for making music so they do just that whilst the story unfolds. The music is therefore part of the story (I describe it as an e-musical), but there is also a strong visual element to it all. Azrock is a kind of crazy scientist who makes his music in an underground laboratory using elaborate and ridiculous machinery, so that conjures up steampunk, gothic imagery, and Pogo is an abandoned orphan who raised herself in a forest but is incredibly beautiful, pure and graceful, so she conjures up fantasy style imagery. The music and whole idea is over-the-top and theatrical as well as borrowing from many, many styles old and modern, and that seems to fit with Art Nouveau imagery to me so a lot of the artwork has that feel too.
The story is really the centre of the whole thing so I put a lot of effort into programming a 3D interactive ‘antique’ book for the website to do justice to the story and illustrations (unfortunately the 3D only works on PCs – iPads don’t support flash). But the website has to host and achieve a lot and is the hub of the whole thing, so I tried to build a great looking website – the graphics of which are based around the crazy machinery that Azrock would have in his studio/laboratory. The functional side of the website has also taken a lot of work – it is a full Content Management System built from scratch for the needs of this project, as well as an automatic marketing engine (see Top Ambassador Prize question below).
What is the inspiration behind Azrock & Pogo? What led you to walking down this path known as music?
I’ve always loved making music since being a child. As for the inspiration behind doing a project like Azrock & Pogo I think I’ve answered that above. But the inspiration behind the actual characters and story: I guess Azrock is a fantasy of how I’d like to live (ie someone who shuns society to live in a cave and make music!), his appearance is a mixture a dubstep dark-lord and steampunk scientist, which reflects the music he makes. I love London and think it’s underground system is hugely iconic so thought it would be cool to set Azrock’s studio in an abandoned underground station (I had that idea before Skyfall or Die Another Day btw!), and Pogo was inspired purely by me hearing the voice that would become her.
What was the last song you listened to?
Blood on my Hands – Spag Heddy remix.
You have built an online community complete with Top Ambassador Prizes and I saw something about you guys giving away some cold hard cash?! What’s the deal with that?
I see music listeners being increasingly fickle and band shelf-lives being increasingly short. Our solution is to give the fans a stake in us – ie the more successful we are the more reward they get, hence they may just be fans for life! There have been models of ‘fan investment’ before but none of them really motivated the fans to play their part in spreading the word – which I think is a mindless waste of potential. Being a programmer I came up with a technological solution – a system which automatically gives fans credit for posting about us, or tweeting about us, or recommending us to their friends etc, plus they can get in touch to be awarded discretionary credits for anything else that helps (eg – writing a blog about us, wearing our T-Shirt on TV, playing our tune in a club … anything you can imagine basically). Every three months those with the most activity win cash prizes. It’s basically a simple but mutually beneficial deal with the fans – the more successful they make us the more reward they’ll get. It may sound bonkers but spending whatever marketing budget we have in this way feels much better than giving it to some PR company!
How is this community helping you expand the reach of your music? What challenges do you face managing your own community in the digital realm?
Hard to tell at the moment – it’s very early days and clearly still experimental – but it’s helped us reach many more people and the nuts and bolts of the system works pretty well. It’s not supposed to win millions of fans overnight, its supposed to create fertile ground for us to grow organically over the years.
Regarding ‘challenges in the digital realm’ it’s terrifying just thinking about it. For a start there’s the sheer scale of the competition out there – all of them naturally creative thinkers coming up with ingenious ways to get ahead. You can’t even discount the crap because until you can get someone to actually listen you all look equal. But even if you DO discount the crap artists, there’s still way more incredible, brilliant artists competing than the world can afford to support. Optimism is obligatory!
More specific challenges are with the technology – it all moves so fast. When I first started building the early parts of the system ‘mobile’ wasn’t a concern, ‘flash’ was still a reliable technology and the Facebook & Twitter programming interfaces are now obselete. And I don’t expect that rate of change to slow down. It’s a huge frustration, especially when all I really want to do is concentrate on making the music and writing the story!
What should listeners expect when they press play on your album?
The most stunning and beautiful voice they’ll ever hear, music that will go places and combine vibes in tasty ways they’ve never heard before, catchy melodies and hooks, iconic basslines and beats, plenty of ‘punch’, a lot of ‘groove’, and a lot of ‘epic’.
Actually scrap that there’s no merit in high expectations. Expect nothing just listen!
What’s in store for the rest of this year? What are Azrock & Pogo up to now that the album is out?
Working on more songs – those familiar with our music so far won’t be surprised to hear there’s some really exciting genre-mashing stuff in the pipeline. Also I’m continuing to write the story and get illustrations done. I have the big picture overview of the story all worked out but the detail for some individual chapters still needs working out and unfortunately I do them in the order inspiration strikes, not necessarily chronological order. Currently there are four chapters live but they have just been setting the scene – the interesting stuff starts to happen over the next few chapters so hopefully people will start to get into the story.
Where can we connect with you online? Stream your tunes?
Ideally go to www.azrockandpogo.co.uk, check it all out then register (top right blue ‘login’ button – its free!).
Also try Facebook anything that we do will get a mention there – https://www.facebook.com/pages/Azrock-and-Pogo/144531271678
For streaming songs go Soundcloud – https://soundcloud.com/azrock-and-pogo
Any last thoughts? Shout outs?
Full respect to MTM for what you guys are doing, and shout outs to all the people who support the project on any level you know who you are!
