A week ago today we lost Claus Christiansen who had been our Klub Golem sound engineer right from the very beginning and until the end of 2025. Often he would also handle stage lights. Furthermore, he regularly did sound on concerts of mine outside Klub Golem territory as well - I believe he did the sound for more than fifty of my concerts. I am happy we were able to be with him at the hospital as the end drew near, talking, drinking coffee and tea and, of course, listening to music.
When we originally had the idea of establishing Klub Golem the venue appointed Ronny Rode Eliasen as combined stage manager and jack of all trades and Claus Christiansen as sound engineer, a friend of Ronny's. Ronny's background was in the Odense punk scene of the eighties, so here was a guy who actually knew what we were on about when talking goth, synth, postpunk, industrial and so on, and Claus was an ex-homeless diehard synthesizer nerd who didn't only know about the machines but also knew how to fix them if they broke. We felt very lucky.
There was never anything like a real, grown-up contract - Claus just became a natural part of the club, part of its DNA, handling the sound and light for every Klub Golem, never missing a single event until cancer prevented him from doing the job earlier this year. He was very much an autodidact; he handled sound and light, he fixed instruments and broken machines - and he was also a skilled musician who played in various bands, projects and settings. At venue Kulturmaskinen which is our Klub Golem homeground, there is a black upright piano in the corner of the stage - often after a successful Klub Golem event somewhere in the middle of the night he and I would sit down and play the keys, from improvised faux baroque to acoustic renditions of classic synth hits by Jean Michel Jarre, Kraftwerk, Depeche Mode, et. al. Every now and then musicians or DJs who had been performing earlier in the night would join in, sing along. If a few keys turned out to be slightly out of tune Claus would return some days later and tune the piano - this he was capable of too.
Claus and I certainly had our differences - his tempo was not mine, his approach more relaxed, mine more intense. We were perfectly capable of yelling at each other during sound checks although it happened only rarely. And then we'd be able to laugh about it ten minutes later. After all, despite the differences we also had many things in common; a shared passion for music and sound, a sense of humour, a certain nerdy fascination with synthesizers and the Commodore 64 and a mutual understanding that the Klub Golem project was something important, not only to ourselves but also to other people. I am certain Claus felt genuinely good about being part of a project that meant and means something to a lot of people.
These past days and nights I have been working to put together a live video of my song Postludium, taken from our Klub Golem Halloween concert last year - this became the last concert of mine where Claus handled sound and stage lights. The song is part of my HCA Suite, about the death of Hans Christian Andersen, giving voice to the fairy tale creatures who are left behind when the authoer must die, as so many ghosts - this seemed like a fitting choice. The video can be found in the Video Section of this site and also on YouTube right here. If you knew Claus one way or the other, send him a happy thought as you watch the video - or, if you're a true goth, a sad one.
Copyright: Ras Bolding 2026