Finishing new CD proved "too much" for PC

As of two days ago, I officially finished 100% the music for my next CD, which I have been working on, between other projects, since about November 2002. I'm now only waiting for the artist to finish the cover artwork, and then the CD can be sent off for duplication/manufacturing. It should be released in a few weeks.

No sooner had I announced the happy news on my newsletter mailing list, when suddenly my PC spontaneously rebooted. Being an Athlon user, I've seen it before. It hasn't happened to me in several months now, but I'm used to this kind of behaviour from an Athlon based system -- when the CPU overheats, it leads to spontaneous reboots. Time to brush off the fans and make sure the cooling is working as it should.

However, this time as the system was booting up again, I couldn't help noticing a strange, "burned" kind of smell. I was just about to shout downstairs to ask if anything was left on the stove in the kitchen, when the PC switched off completely and I realized the smell -- and indeed the smoke! -- was coming from my PC. I guess the overheating went a little further than usual this time!

The PC is obviously completely dead. It refuses to even think about starting up. I opened it up and removed all non-essentials (graphics card, sound cards, scsi card, hard disks, optical drives). Now when I hit the power button, the CPU fan does a few pathetic rounds and then shuts back down after less than a second. It's quite simply dead.

I think it's kind of romantic. The PC has been pushed very hard during these last few weeks as I have been working hard to finish the new album and pretty much been pushing the PC for all it's worth. It did the job, I finished the album 100%, the master CD was burned, and then it died. Maybe I should dedicate the album to the memory of my extremely hard working PC, which gave it's life to the creation of this CD. :-)

I have ordered a new CPU and Mainboard and will rebuild a new PC keeping my other bits (RAM, storage, cards, etc.). I'm now typing this on a laptop that I just happened to buy last week. Maybe I had a "sixth sense" of some sort, telling me that the end was coming for my PC.

The photo shows the corpse of my dear old PC, waiting for a new spine and a new brain (mainboard and CPU) that I can use to re-build it.

PS: The working title for the CD has always been "Beneath Another Sky", but I've now just learned that there is another album already called that, so I might go for a different title. I was thinking about maybe "Beneath a Different Sky", or "Beneath a Distant Sky". Other suggestions welcome. :-)

- Bjorn

The "other" Divinorum

It has come to my attention that another music artist has started calling himself Divinorum, and apparently also published a CD ("Lemon Flavored Kiss") using the Divinorum name.

As you can probably imagine, as the musician behind the original Divinorum, I'm not really happy about it. I mean, it's not like it was difficult to find out that there was already a music act called Divinorum. My use of the name Divinorum has been plastered all over the internet since 1998, and all this guy had to do (or even his record company) was to type "Divinorum" into any search engine or even just try www.divinorum.com and it would have taken them to my Divinorum project.

Here are some of the things that make me pretty confident that I have the right to the name Divinorum as it applies to a music group:

• I released the first official Divinorum release already in 1998 on a compilation-CD from Boom! Records
• I released the first Divinorum full-length album as a fully commercial release on DanceStreet Records in 1998
• I have released 3 full-length Divinorum albums and Divinorum has been present on minimum 10 compilation-CDs from various record labels all over the world.
• As 'Divinorum' I was "featured artist of the month" in Keyboard Magazine.
• I've had the site www.divinorum.com since about 1999
• By typing "Divinorum" into any search engine, or into iTunes music store, will take you to my Divinorum CDs.

When you decide to start using an artist name for your music, it's probably a good idea to spend 30 seconds on trying to find out if there is already another artist that's called the same thing. I'm sorry that the "other" Divinorum didn't do this. It could have saved us some of the confusion.

- Bjorn Lynne, aka Divinorum since 1998.

Collectable Bjorn Lynne CD fetches nice profit on eBay

In the same way that it's kind of a disheartening for any musician to see his own CDs sold cheap in the "bargain bin" (ahem, or so I've heard) ;-), it's equally encouraging and, well, actually quite brilliant, for any musician to see his CDs fetching "collectable" style prices second-hand.

Recently a used copy of my CD "Phoenix - Deep Space Resurrection" (released 1997, now sold out) fetched a very handsome EUR 45,50 (approx. 55 US$) on the German eBay site.

I guess that's good news if you are one of the 1,000 who has this CD, or any other of my CDs which are now sold out. It's obviously also very cool for me. :-) Many thanks to Jan Zottmann for spotting this and telling me about it.

- Bjorn

A note about my sold-out CDs

Through the years I have released a lot of CD-albums. A few of these are now sold out, and will not be re-pressed. From time to time, people ask me whether there is any possibility at all, of obtaining a copy of these CDs.

In reply, I usually make people this offer: If you buy any two (or more) CDs from my own personal CD-shop, I will make a CD-R copy of the sold-out CD that you were interested in. I write on the CD-R "authorised copy" and put my signature on it. This CD is then included for you free of charge and sent along with the two (or more) CDs that you ordered.

So I would just like to make it official, that this is an offer that's open to everybody. If there's a sold-out CD of mine that you want to obtain, simply order 2 or more CDs from my CD-shop, send me an email and ask me for a CD-R copy of the sold-out CD, and I will take care of that for you. :-). Cool, eh?

The sold-out CDs are:

• Worms Armageddon Soundtrack CD (EP 25 mins)
• Worms 2 Soundtrack CD (including music from Worms, Worms Reinforcements and Worms 2)
• Alien Breed 3D - original soundtrack CD
• Decade
• Hobbits & Spaceships
• Montage
• Phoenix - Deep Space Resurrection - original soundtrack CD
• Seven Kingdoms - original soundtrack CD
• Seven Kingdoms II - the Frythan Wars - original soundtrack CD
• X2 - original soundtrack CD