The Flight, Joe Henson and Alex Smith
The Flight is a composer duo consisting of Joe Henson and Alex Smith who have worked on the soundtracks for several video games.
History[]
Early years[]
Joe Henson and Alex Smith began collaborating in 2005, after co-producing an album for Henson's band Seventhsun and realizing they had "a similar approach to life and wildly divergent musical tastes". They have since worked on soundtracks in the video game industry, including 2014's Alien: Isolation and 2017's Horizon Zero Dawn.
Assassin's Creed[]
In 2014, The Flight contributed to the multiplayer soundtrack of Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag.[1] While Brian Tyler composed the entirety of the main game's soundtrack, the composing duo of The Flight did only 40 minutes of soudtrack for the multiplayer mode.[2]
Later in 2018, they composed the soundtrack of Assassin's Creed: Odyssey. Differing from their last soundtrack work, The Flight requested as much visual information from the then-upcoming game as they could. The image that resonated with them the most was of the protagonist standing in front of Athens. The year beforehand, they composed the soundtrack to Horizon Zero Dawn. Unconsciously avoiding sounding like their previous work, the duo noted that themes of Odyssey differed greatly. Odyssey's themes included betrayal, vengeance and war, even describing it as a proper Greek tragedy.[3]
On the creation of Odyssey's soundtrack, Henson and Smith started on the main themes, character themes, and antagonist themes, before moving onto creating music for the individual regions of Greece. The duo's favorite piece they composed was "The Legend of the Eagle Bearer". Additional assistance on the soundtrack included; Mike Georgiades on various stringed instruments, Renaud Ford playing the rebec, Emma Rohan on vocals for the main theme, with Rob Farrer and Joby Burgess on percussion. They also worked with George Strezov and the Sofia Session Choir in Bulgaria.[3]
During the development of the Odyssey sountrack, the two composers were not permitted to play early builds of the game for inspiration, and so all they had to go on was the video captures sent to them from the Ubisoft music team.[3] The only input from Ubisoft that they were given is the need for an Odyssey version of the track "Ezio's Family", now considered the main theme for the series.[1] When they were eventually able to play, Henson played as Kassandra while Smith was Alexios.[3]
Assassin's Creed works[]
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References[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Banas, Graham (15 November 2018). Interview: Swan-Diving into the Music of Assassin's Creed Odyssey with Composers, The Flight. Push Square. Archived from the original on 14 November 2018. Retrieved on 19 June 2020.
- ↑ Vezos, Manos (26 September 2018). Assassin's Creed Odyssey: The Flight share thoughts on their soundtrack. Enternity.gr. Archived from the original on 19 June 2020. Retrieved on 19 June 2020.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Honea, Keri (13 December 2018). Taking Flight With Assassin’s Creed Odyssey – Meet the Composers Behind the Brilliant Soundtrack. PlayStation Lifestyle. Archived from the original on 19 June 2020.
External links[]
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