These are the nights, these are your bytes,
welcome to the future past.
Action replay, fire away,
take me to the future past now!
Ras Bolding hails from Odense, Denmark, a town that gave the world Hans Christian Andersen and now plays host to a quirky conjurer of electronic incantations. His music is a synthesis of the mechanical and the mythic, an eclectic communion of synth and wave, goth and post-punk, all threaded with the glitchy mischief of 8-bit computer game nostalgia and the grandeur of classical composition. Bolding helms an arsenal of synthesizers, coaxing from them a sound that crackles with digital defiance, but he is no purist: guitar, recorder, glockenspiel, even sheets of metal find their way into his experiments. His work dances between digital utopias and dystopias, oscillating between the pixelated joys of childhood and the inescapable algorithms of modernity.
8-Bit Kid, lifted from Digital Deviant, revels in the anarchic glee of early hacker culture, when Commodore 64 warriors rewrote the rules of the game, quite literally. A blitzkrieg of bright synths and chiptune chirps, it pays tribute to a bygone era where bytes carried rebellion and digital space felt infinite. It pulses with the neon-lit thrill of discovery, a soundtrack to joystick duels and command-line conquests, before corporate greed turned the digital frontier into a walled garden. The track captures the exhilaration of hacking, modifying, and breaking apart technology with a mischievous grin, immersing the listener in an era where pixels burned brighter than profit margins.
“8-Bit Kid is one of the last songs I wrote and recorded for the album and I wanted to try and do an upbeat and catchy pop song with tight production, something like a retro-futuristic hymn to celebrate the hacker subculture that arose around the Commodore 64,” says Bolding. “I also made sure this would never really work as a regular pop song, since the lyrics are all hacker references to the Commodore 64 scene…and most people of course won’t have a clue about multi-colour sprites or the SID sound chip – which, by the way, provides the sound of the lead theme in the song.”
Christian Nørgaar and Bolding’s amusing video for 8-Bit Kid straddles the fine line between kitsch and calamity, a satirical take on nostalgia. Bolding, cast as the protagonist, stumbles through a simulation teeming with pop culture ghosts: breakdancers popping and locking on city streets, yuppies flexing business cards, punks protesting nuclear annihilation. A smoky embrace leads to a red-lit tryst, only to wake to an empty bed and a note that delivers a gut punch—she has AIDS, and now, so does he. Game over. A new verse, a new disaster: a hacker clicks the world into apocalyptic overdrive, Cold War paranoia made real, nuclear holocaust triggered by keystroke. But third time’s a charm: lasers flash, synths surge, Bolding finds his rhythm on stage, a fleeting triumph in a world where the reset button always looms.
“I think 8-Bit Kid is the first music video of mine to feature something like a happy end,” says Bolding. “I wanted to make a video that dealt with nostalgia, the eternal eighties fascination, but with a sense of humour albeit dark, showcasing all the classic tropes whilst also saying there was AIDS and Cold War anxiety too, and for the final chorus we perform on stage, and I guess I’m trying to say music was one of the key factors of making it through the eighties despite those fears. Fellow Danes will probably notice the brief cameo by comedy and film duo, Wikke & Rasmussen, whose television and music madness was an essential part of eighties culture in Denmark.”
Watch the video for “8-Bit Kid” below:
Ras Bolding’s performances are theatrical spectacles, a riot of laser beams and flashing lights, his stage lined with a battalion of synthesizers, both analogue and digital. The Commodore 64, slung like a keytar, hums beneath his fingers, a relic repurposed for rebellion. At his side, Alex Anarki and Kaos Korrosion summon electronic storms, their presence a fusion of goth grandeur, steampunk oddity, and Blade Runner dystopia. His concerts unfold in clubs, festivals, art museums…even the unlikeliest corners of underground culture, from Hans Christian Andersen’s House to the dim-lit dens of hardcore S&M gatherings. Once, for the sake of spectacle, he performed a midnight show strictly for ghosts.
Beyond the stage, Bolding orchestrates Klub Golem, Odense’s sanctuary for the avant-garde, a gathering ground for those drawn to the dark and the different. When not performing, he lends his words to Gaffa, Denmark’s foremost music magazine, dissecting the past, present, and digital futures of sound.
Digital Deviant is out now. You can stream it below and order the album here.
Follow Ras Bolding:
Or via: