Working with Replay Events Ltd., The Sound Architect will be presenting and hosting a dedicated audio stage at Play Expo Manchester!
Founder/CEO Sam Hughes, will be hosting a stage of talks, interviews and some live performances over the course of both days at this year’s Play Expo Manchester at EventCity, October 8th and 9th.
There are some fantastic guests joining us on this stage and we will be making announcements running up to the event.
Guests: David Housden – Composer, Jay Britton – Voice Actor, Ash Read – Sound Designer
David Housden – Composer
David Housden is an award-winning, BAFTA nominated composer best known for his collaborations with visionary game developer Mike Bithell on the BAFTA award-winning indie hit Thomas Was Alone and his latest opus, Volume. Drawing upon his garage rock band days, Housden creates melodic, original music scores which illuminate imaginary worlds with real emotion and immersion.
Housden was first launched into the spotlight with his original score for Mike Bithell’s best-selling indie title Thomas Was Alone. Featuring minimalist pianos and ambiences fused with lush strings and ethereal synths, both the game and soundtrack enjoyed rave reviews, receiving BAFTA nominations for ‘Best Story’, ‘Best Original Music’ and ‘Best Performance’ (winner) as well as Develop nominations for Best Audio Contribution and Best Use of Narrative (winner), and Honourable mentions from the Independent Games Festival for Excellence in Visual Design and Excellence in Audio.
His score for Volume – Mike Bithell’s sci-fi re-imagining of the Robin Hood mythology starring award-winning actor Andy Serkis – fuses medieval instrumentation, with contemporary percussive beds and synths, post-rock type ambiences and cinematic grandeur; Housden created many of the ambiences by manipulating source recordings from Sherwood Forest, combined with the ethereal vocals of Riva Taylor (Assassin’s Creed Theme).
Delivering sophisticated scores with exceptional production value he’s also worked on Bossa Studio’s BAFTA award winning Monstermind, Sony’s Playstation Home for PSN, and, Jonathan Ross’ first game narrated by Stephen Fry. Housden is also signed to various publishers, creating film and television cues for a vast list of clientele including Warner Brothers, Universal Studios, Paramount, Fox, MTV, HBO, ABC and VH1.
Widely tipped as one of the industry’s most promising young talents, he’s recently signed to mega agency COOL Music Interactive, who represent some of the best talent in the industry. After scoring his first feature length film earlier in the year, he has since ventured into creating for the exciting world of virtual reality, with his work on Mike Bithell’s Coda due for release with PlayStation VR in October; as well as multiple new game projects due out in the next year.
Jay Britton – Voice Actor
Jay Britton is one of the UK’s most prolific video games voice actors with over 50 roles across 26 titles in the last two years. You may have heard him as Will from Fragments of Him, Captain Daniel McLean or his brother Chris in the recent released The Turing Test or as either Shank or Jester from the popular MOBA Strife. You can also hear his voice as multiple characters in War Thunder, Flying Tigers, World of Tanks and upcoming title Dwarves. Just for good measure you can also hear him as lots of characters dying on Game of Thrones!
Jay is also a motion capture and facial capture actor, previously performing full performance capture for the lovable online character Talking Tom. He’s also slated to appear later this year in another full performance capture role alongside Troy Baker and Lance Reddick in the new virtual reality game Spirit City.
Alongside this though Jay is an avid gamer so when not on the audio stage you’ll probably find him out in the expo trying to play as many games as he can!
You can follow Jay on Twitter at @voicejaybritton
Ash Read – Sound Designer
Ash Read is a sound designer at CCP Games, who is currently working on the VR title EVE: Valkyrie, based upon the popular EVE: Online Universe. Ash has also worked on The Crew, Watch Dogs, LEGO Lord of the Rings and LEGO City. With years of experience as a sound designer in the industry, Ash has also been one of the first audio professionals to work with VR on a AAA title.
Ash will be present at the expo all weekend so make sure you come along to hear about VR audio!
You can find Ash on twitter at @CCP_Sine
We will also be joined by Matt Griffin, composer/sound designer for Prospect Games’ release Unbox! More info soon!
More guests will be announced in the coming weeks and we have some great guests joining us at Play Expo Manchester!