Pyre

A pyre (Ancient Greek: πυρά; pyrá, from πῦρ, pyr, "fire"), also known as a funeral pyre, is a structure, usually made of wood, for burning a body as part of a funeral rite or execution. As a form of cremation, a body is placed upon or under the pyre, which is then set on fire.

Uses

Traditionally, pyres are used for the cremation of the dead in the Hindu and Sikh religions, a practice which dates back several thousands of years. Funeral pyres were also used in Viking and Roman culture.

Secular

Pyres and bonfires are used in celebrations and remembrance in services. Examples of these are Guy Fawkes Night in the United Kingdom and some Commonwealth countries, where the 'Guy', either seen as an effigy of Guy Fawkes or the Pope, is burned.

Funeral pyres were used by the Nazis to cremate the bodies of 1,500,000+ prisoners in Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka extermination camps, as opposed to the crematoria used in other camps. Pyres have also been used to dispose of large quantities of livestock in agriculture, particularly those infected with disease.

Soundtrack

A soundtrack, also written sound track, can be recorded music accompanying and synchronized to the images of a motion picture, book, television program or video game; a commercially released soundtrack album of music as featured in the soundtrack of a film or TV show; or the physical area of a film that contains the synchronized recorded sound.

Origin of the term

In movie industry terminology usage, a sound track is an audio recording created or used in film production or post-production. Initially the dialogue, sound effects, and music in a film each has its own separate track (dialogue track, sound effects track, and music track), and these are mixed together to make what is called the composite track, which is heard in the film. A dubbing track is often later created when films are dubbed into another language. This is also known as a M & E track (music and effects) containing all sound elements minus dialogue which is then supplied by the foreign distributor in the native language of its territory.

PlayStation 4

The PlayStation 4 (PS4) is a home video game console developed by Sony Computer Entertainment. Announced as the successor to the PlayStation 3 during a press conference on February 20, 2013, it was launched on November 15, 2013 in North America, and November 29, 2013 in Europe, South America and Australia. It competes with Nintendo's Wii U and Microsoft's Xbox One, as part of the eighth generation of video game consoles.

Moving away from the more complex Cell microarchitecture of its predecessor, the console features an AMD Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) built around the x86-64 architecture; with a theoretical peak performance of 1.84 teraflops, AMD stated that the processor was the "most powerful" APU they had developed to date. The PlayStation 4 places an increased emphasis on social interaction and integration with other devices and services, including the ability to play games off the console on PlayStation Vita and supported Sony Xperia mobile devices ("Remote Play"), the ability to stream gameplay online, or to friends with the ability for them to control gameplay remotely ("Share Play"). The console's controller was also refined over that of the PlayStation 3, with improved buttons, analog sticks and an integrated touchpad among other changes.

Darren Korb

Darren Korb (born November 5, 1983) is an American songwriter and composer best known for creating the music featured in Bastion and Transistor. Both video games were developed by indie developer Supergiant Games.

Early life and career

Having an engineering background, Darren Korb went to New York University for music production and music business. Prior to his work with Supergiant Games, he worked on minor television and film projects. He was also a member of the NYC band Audio Fiction and was the co-founder, as well as a current member of NYC indie band, Control Group.

Work with Supergiant Games

Bastion (2011)

A childhood friend of Supergiant Games co-founder, Amir Rao, Korb was selected to write the music for Bastion. Korb describes the music on Bastion as "acoustic frontier trip-hop," combining, "heavily sampled beats in layers, along with acoustic elements." On Bastion, a long-time friend of Korb's, Ashley Barrett, would provide the voice of Zia, as well as the vocals on the soundtrack.

Supergiant Games

Supergiant Games is an American video game development company based in San Jose, California. It was founded in 2009 by Amir Rao and Gavin Simon, and currently consists of employees in San Jose and other locations. Several of its team members were former developers from the Electronic Arts Los Angeles studio, which developed the Command & Conquer series of video games.

Their first game, Bastion, received high critical praise, including being listed among several "Game of the Year" lists from game journalists. It was first shown in mid-development at the 2010 Penny Arcade Expo as part of its "PAX 10" highlight ten upcoming independently developed games. This attracted several publishers who wanted to help distribute the game, but Supergiant Games found that Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment shared the same vision they had for the game. Supergiant selected them as their publishing partner, enabling them not only to distribute the game to Xbox Live Arcade but as a premiere title during the 2011 "Summer of Arcade" promotion.