Abbey Road

Abbey Road is the 11th studio album by the English rock band the Beatles, released on 26 September 1969 in the United Kingdom and on 1 October 1969 in the United States. The recording sessions for the album were the last in which all four Beatles participated. Although Let It Be was the final album that the Beatles completed before the band's dissolution in April 1970, most of the album had been recorded before the Abbey Road sessions began. A double A-side single from the album, "Something"/"Come Together", released in October, topped the Billboard chart in the US.

Abbey Road is a rock album that incorporates genres such as blues, pop and progressive rock, and it makes prominent use of the Moog synthesizer and the Leslie speaker. Side two contains a medley of song fragments edited together to form a single piece. The album was recorded amidst a more collegial atmosphere than the Get Back/Let It Be sessions earlier in the year, but there were still frequent confrontations within the band, particularly over Paul McCartney's song "Maxwell's Silver Hammer", one of four tracks on which John Lennon did not perform. He had privately left the group by the time the album was released and McCartney publicly quit the following year.

Abbey Road Studios

Abbey Road Studios (formerly known as EMI Studios) is a recording studio located at 3 Abbey Road, St John's Wood, City of Westminster, London, England. It was established November 1931 by the Gramophone Company, a predecessor of British music company EMI, which owned it until Universal Music took control of part of EMI in 2012.

Abbey Road Studios is most notable as being the 1960s' venue for innovative recording techniques adopted by the Beatles, Pink Floyd, the Hollies, Badfinger and others. One of its earliest world famous artist clients was Paul Robeson, who recorded December 1931 and went on to record many of his best-known songs there.

Towards the end of 2009, the studio came under threat of sale to property developers. However, the British Government protected the site, granting it English Heritage Grade II listed status in 2010, thereby preserving the building from any major alterations.

History

Originally a nine-bedroom Georgian townhouse built in the 1830s on the footpath leading to Kilburn Abbey, the building was later converted to flats where the most flamboyant resident was Maundy Gregory.

Final Fantasy

Final Fantasy (ファイナルファンタジー, Fainaru Fantajī) is a science fiction and fantasy media franchise created by Hironobu Sakaguchi, and developed and owned by Square Enix (formerly Square). The franchise centers on a series of fantasy and science fantasy role-playing video games (RPGs). The eponymous first game in the series, published in 1987, was conceived by Sakaguchi as his last-ditch effort in the game industry; the title was a success and spawned sequels. The video game series has since branched into other genres such as tactical role-playing, action role-playing, massively multiplayer online role-playing, racing, third-person shooter, fighting, rhythm and anime.

Although most Final Fantasy installments are stand-alone stories with different settings and main characters, they feature identical elements that define the franchise. Recurring elements include plot themes, character names, and game mechanics. Plots center on a group of heroes battling a great evil while exploring the characters' internal struggles and relationships. Character names are frequently derived from the history, languages, pop culture, and mythologies of cultures worldwide.

The Beatles

The Beatles were an English rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960. With members John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, they became widely regarded as the foremost and most influential act of the rock era. Rooted in skiffle, beat, and 1950s rock and roll, the Beatles later experimented with several genres, ranging from pop ballads and Indian music to psychedelia and hard rock, often incorporating classical elements in innovative ways. In the early 1960s, their enormous popularity first emerged as "Beatlemania", but as the group's music grew in sophistication, led by primary songwriters Lennon and McCartney, they came to be perceived as an embodiment of the ideals shared by the counterculture of the 1960s.

The Beatles built their reputation playing clubs in Liverpool and Hamburg over a three-year period from 1960, with Stuart Sutcliffe initially serving as bass player. The core of Lennon, McCartney and Harrison went through a succession of drummers, most notably Pete Best, before asking Starr to join them. Manager Brian Epstein moulded them into a professional act and producer George Martin enhanced their musical potential. They gained popularity in the United Kingdom after their first hit, "Love Me Do", in late 1962. They acquired the nickname "the Fab Four" as Beatlemania grew in Britain over the following year, and by early 1964 they had become international stars, leading the "British Invasion" of the United States pop market. From 1965 onwards, the Beatles produced what many consider their finest material, including the innovative and widely influential albums Rubber Soul (1965), Revolver (1966), Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), The Beatles (commonly known as the White Album, 1968) and Abbey Road (1969).

Final Fantasy XV

Final Fantasy XV (Japanese: ファイナルファンタジーXV, Hepburn: Fainaru Fantajī Fifutīn) is an upcoming action role-playing video game being developed and published by Square Enix for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, and currently scheduled for a worldwide release in 2016. It is the fifteenth main installment in the Final Fantasy series, and forms part of the Fabula Nova Crystallis subseries, which also includes Final Fantasy XIII and Final Fantasy Type-0. Originally a PlayStation 3-exclusive spin-off titled Final Fantasy Versus XIII, it is a major departure from previous games, providing a darker atmosphere that focuses on more realistic human characters than previous entries. The game features an open-world environment and action-based battle system similar to the Kingdom Hearts series and Type-0, incorporating the ability to switch weapons and other elements such as vehicle travel and camping.

The game takes place in a world similar to modern-day Earth, where all the world's countries bar the kingdom of Lucis are under the dominion of the empire of Niflheim. Noctis Lucis Caelum, heir to the Lucian throne—having gained magical power from a near-death experience—is driven from his home when Niflheim invades Lucis on the eve of peace negotiations between the two nations. Now on the run with his companions, Noctis begins to work towards defeating the forces of Niflheim and rescuing the crystal from their control.