It is well past midnight, somewhere outside in the cold and dark people have already started with the fireworks and I'm sitting in my studio, surrounded by the dear music machines and blue lights, typing a few words before the year ends, as is my tradition. And I suppose 2024 has been, in many ways, an eventful year for me; gorgeousness and gorgeousity.
I gave a number of concerts and performances during 2024 and as always I feel very grateful to be able to present my music on stage to people, thankful to all those of you who showed up. It means, as the saying goes, the world to me. I also attended a good number of concerts; childhood heroes of mine such as Jean Michel Jarre, Einstürzende Neubauten, OMD, Laibach - and a X-Mas ballet and concert staging of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker; with a laser beam X-Mas tree, no less. I also went to a number of concerts with acts from my own generation or younger, artists and bands I hadn't seen previously, something which I think is imporant, perhaps especially if you're a musician. 2024 also saw Kaos Korrosion join the live band line-up and she already feels very much part of the family, having performed with us in a number of venues, different settings and countries and while Alex Anarki has been around a year and a half now it certainly feels like more as she has become a very close partner and a big help. The three of us are all eccentrics and weirdos for better and worse - and again I feel thankful.
A couple of months ago we celebrated another Klub Golem anniversary, another year, and I sometimes find it strange to think we are still around, alive and kicking. And then again when I look at the small group of good people who make this happen, again and again, I am perhaps not so surprised, after all. Other clubs and projects are also thriving in my hometown of Odense, something which certainly hasn't always been the case. We have alternative and underground scenes now and they seem to mostly work - a little wonder, as another childhood hero of mine once sang.
And yes, I finally gave up and gave in to people around me bugging me to release that album - and of course I chose the official release date to be November 30, to coincide with our Klub Golem anniversary and make our performance a release concert for Digital Deviant. We filmed and recorded the concert and I hope I will be able to put up a live video or two sometime. Speaking of videos I also fairly recently released the music video for 8-Bit Kid, one of the songs off Digital Deviant. The video features a computer simulation/game of the 1980s with lots of references to everything eighties, from the Commodore 64 to Blade Runner, eyeliner and hairspray - and most certainly AIDS and The Cold War. Many people helped and assisted - thank you once again - and Danish film and TV legends Wikke & Rasmussen, whose television and music madness was an essential part of eighties culture in Denmark, took part as well. As we filmed their little cameo I found myself asking please move a little to that side, try and look so and so, and genuinely thought: what am I doing here, trying to direct these guys who have done so many movie and television projects?
So, my friends and droogs, there goes yet another year again - and here's hoping 2025 will be a busy one too!
Copyright: Ras Bolding 2024
I have decided to release my Digital Deviant album which has been some time on its way, in part due to my own aversions. For years I believed - or wanted to believe - releasing music the way it happened when I was a child was something of the past, that the internet would change things and make for a completely different distribution system. Some of us were naive enough, for a while, to believe things would even be better, more fair. Of course this is not what actually happened and I've reached the conclusion the old ways of releasing and distributing music most probably won't die before we all do. It's a generational thing, I suppose, and for all its razzle-dazzle antics the music industry was always essentially rather conservative and certainly still is. I would say even more so today. Which is why I never really wanted anything to do with it.
People around me, not the least my musicians, managed to gradually convince me to do a release and for a while I considered labels, even contacted a few rather half-heartedly. Given my ambivalent feelings about releasing and especially selling music it really didn't feel right to involve third parties so I decided to do things myself. Which is usually how I do things anyway. I'm still not keen on the idea of selling my music, I honestly don't feel comfortable in the role of a product. I love making the music and performing it in concert. The idea of selling it makes me uneasy, that's simply how it is but it is a game I will have to try and play.
Enough of the whining - Digital Deviant is a concept album of sorts, a comment on digital culture for better and for worse, a few thoughts on the future we were promised and the present we ended up with instead. I have covered many styles of music over the years but I think I consider the ten songs, well, technically speaking nine songs and one instrumental, that make up the Digital Deviant album pop songs of sorts, in that they mostly make use of various types of verse-chorus structures. And then most of them are rather upbeat. To me pop music seemed the right language for addressing and commenting on digital culture since pop music, in the broadest sense of that term, has been the most prevalent musical language the last hundred years or so.
And there you have it - a collection of songs dealing with computer game euphoria and hacker culture, with cybersex and revenge porn, with internet communication and loneliness, everyday events of the 21st century. The album is released first digitally and physically on cd but if I prove good enough at the selling game - and you willing enough - I hope to also do a vinyl release of the album in a not too distant future.
Klub Golem in Odense, Denmark, November 30, will see us do a release concert - and every guest will receive an album on arrival, so we sincerely hope to see many of you there. And see? I told you I'm no good at the selling game.
Copyright: Ras Bolding 2024