Ras Bolding storms in like a wired ringmaster, dragging the ghosts of Odense’s past into a chrome-lit tomorrow. The man has always lived in a crossroads of impulses: goth mist, post-punk pulse, synth strut, 8-bit mischief, even an occasional folkish turn, but Digital Deviant is where all those wires knot and spark. Turn Me On, the album’s opener, flips its master switch with a grin and a glitch.
Bolding calls the song “upbeat.” The tempo certainly moves like a dancefloor waking up from a bad dream, but the real action is in the premise: a human chatting with a sentient machine, each one leaning a little too close to the monitor. The title winks at something bedroom-adjacent, but it’s really a tug-of-war over control: who pulls the plug, who gets to feel alive. Bolding’s voice rides the arrangement like someone testing the edges of a new toy: gleaming synth leads launching from nowhere, 8-bit sparks cutting the corners, and breakbeat stutters darting in like mischievous sprites. There’s a strange joy in hearing a song spin itself inside out and still land upright.
“Turn Me On was among the first songs written for what ended up as Digital Deviant; it is the opening track and as such I wanted it to set the tone of the album, to reflect the upbeat nature of the music, rooted in a strong sense of melody,” says Bolding. “I see it as a pop song in that it makes use of a verse-chorus structure although it does play a little with the formula, such as going from intro to synth theme before introducing the more traditional structure of verse, bridge, chorus. With the lyrics I wanted to play around with human-machine relations in a way that reflected both futuristic dreaming and dystopian warning.”
You get the sense he’s having fun pushing the buttons…literally. Onstage he’s surrounded by analogue beasts, digital brutes, and even a Commodore 64 slung like a keytar from an alternate dimension. With Alex Anarki and Kaos Korrosion at his flanks, the whole setup feels like a séance for obsolete hardware.
The video was shot in Magasinet, Kulturmaskinen, and Odense University, slamming together futurist corridors and stage setups that feel plucked from some midnight TV broadcast beamed in from 1982. Color schemes cycle like mood swings: cyan for the breaths at the edges, red for the synth premonitions, blue for the verses, green for the hook. Blade Runner hovers over it like the patron saint of chrome-soaked futures, and the editing clips along with a clean, adrenal snap.
“I don’t necessarily find the concept of performance videos all that interesting,” Bolding confesses. “…I thought, for the sake of variation, it would make sense to go for a performance video of sorts with Turn Me On. Since the song is based on the idea of a communication between a sentient machine and a human being, I decided to throw in a few Blade Runner references for general amusement, presenting my musicians and myself as a band of replicants. To add a bit of extra visual content I also opted for occasional graphics and text overlays, the latter providing info you don’t really need but which looks fancy and technical – a tongue in cheek reference to so many science fiction movies.”
It’s that mix – deadpan wit, digital dazzle, and an instinct for melodies that stick – that makes Turn Me On feel like a message from a future that never shut down the past. Bolding is rummaging through every electronic fever dream we’ve ever had and wiring them together with this one.
Watch the video for ‘Turn Me On” below:
Order Digital Deviant here. Listen to Turn Me On below:
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The post “I’m Your Machine” — Danish Artist Ras Bolding Debuts Tongue in Cheek Video for Sci-Fi Synth-Pop Track “Turn Me On” appeared first on Post-Punk.com.