Interview
Handle: DR.AWESOME/CRUSADERS (Homepage)
WHO I AM - BRIEF HISTORY...
Dr.Awesome entered the Amiga scene in 1987 when the first A500's went on sale in Norway. Himself and a few friends started the Amiga demo group Crusaders, and started making demos and music disks, some of which became quite popular in the Amiga scene. He also started the first and original (Crusaders) EuroCharts together with El Cubo / Crusaders.
Dr.Awesome was the musician in Crusaders and made all music for all Crusaders demos and music disks (Audio-X, Freekd Out, etc.), until a second musician, Fleshbrain, joined Crusaders a few years later. Dr.Awesome and Fleshbrain made many, many music disks together (Bacteria, Bass-o-Matic, Sweet Music, etc. etc. etc.) and of course all the music for Crusaders demos and productions such as the EuroCharts, Tuff Enuff, Space Deliria and many other demos.
Some of the best known Dr.Awesome tunes were the "Now What" series, "Tied Up", "Space Deliria", "Andante", "Hitsquad", "12th Warrior", "Bridge to the Universe", "Empty Spaces", "Moongazer", "Tranze-7", etc. etc. From 1987 till 1993, Dr.Awesome made a total of about 400 Amiga mod tunes. Now and then, he also worked as a freelance musician for different software companies. Some of the Amiga games he composed the music for back then were "Fantastic Voyage", "Escape from Colditz", "Brat", "Cubulus", "Qwak", "Airline", "Project-X" (only one song in that game, the rest was done by Allister Brimble) and a few other games.
In 1992, Dr.Awesome and Fleshbrain took the "big step" and released the *first* music-CD to come out of the Amiga scene. The CD was titled Dr.Awesome & Fleshbrain's "Hobbits & Spaceships".
In 1993, Dr.Awesome got more and more interested in making music with a full studio-sound. He composed a soundtrack for a feature-length theatre production ("Brave New Virtual World"), and in 1994, he released his second CD, this time on his own. This CD was titled "Montage".
While still trying to keep contact with the Amiga scene, it got more difficult as things like work, CD-music, girls and all kinds of bullshit :-) took more and more time. But Dr.Awesome kept on composing music, and during the later part of 1994, he composed his new CD "Dreamstate", which was a big, big step forward in compositional and production quality. Dr.Awesome started thinking about sending out demo-tapes of this new album, to try to get a record contract. To his surprise, he only had to send out *one* single tape, as the very first record-company that he sent the tape to, immediately gave him a record contract. This was the English record company Centaur Records, with distribution through Pinnacle, UK's largest music distributor. Along with this, Dr.Awesome changed his CD artist name to simply LYNNE, which is also his surname.
At about the same time as he got this record-contract, something else happened; the well known game development company Team17 Software had grown so much that they needed a full-time musician, and Dr.Awesome was offered this job. So in April 1995, he moved from Norway to England and started his work as a full time music composer and sound designer for Team17 Software, where he still works today. Some of the games he has composed the music for since he started as the full-time Team17 musician are "Worms", "Alien Breed 3D", "Final Over", "Worms Reinforcements", "Alien Breed 3D 2 - The Killing Grounds", and more games are under development. (Project-X 2, Allegiance, Rally Fever).
During the summer and autumn of 1995, while working in his new studio (Studio17) in the Team17 offices, Dr.Awesome wrote a lot of music that would turn into the "Witchwood" album. He got his new found English friend and excellent guitar player Ken Senior to play guitar on the album. So "Witchwood" is Dr.Awesome's 4th CD, and it is the first one that has real guitar on it. (Except one track on "Dreamstate" which also had real guitar). There is also some flute and even some vocals on "Witchwood", all done by Dr.Awesome (except the guitar).
Centaur Records, who had given Dr.Awesome his record- contract for "Dreamstate" expressed their interest in releasing "Witchwood", but over the year that had passed since "Dreamstate", Dr.Awesome was rather disappointed with the record company. He feels they did not do enough to promote his album. So he decided to release "Witchwood" on a different record-company. He sent a tape to the italian record company "Mellow Records" and once again, he only needed to send that one tape - Mellow Records were very enthusiastic about the music, and it was decided to release "Witchwood" on Mellow Records, who will distribute the album worldwide.
Whenever he finds the time, Dr.Awesome still hangs around on irc in the #Amiga or #Amigascne channels. He is also about to start writing a regular column for the disk- and net-magazine RAW.
While "Witchwood" has been in the production- and manufacturing stages, Dr.Awesome has got in touch with TRSI Recordz, who will probably release his *next* album. But that's the future. "Witchwood" is now.