Penka Kouneva may not be a household name, but her compositions have filled the ears of millions. She’s made music for massively successful video games, movies and TV shows. In anticipation of the release for her third concept album, Rebirth of Id, Player.One talked to the mind behind the music.
Aside from her solo work, Kouneva has worked on the music for games like Gears of War 3, Overwatch and World of Warcraft, as well as movies and TV shows such as Ender’s Game and Revenge. While many composers tend to focus primarily on one medium, Kouneva finds the change appealing.
“I absolutely love the variety and the diverse challenges that each genre presents,” Kouneva told Player.One. “When I write my own albums, I’m expressing my own ideas. When I am a collaborative composer, I breathe life into the vision of another creator. I enjoy shifting gears, it keeps me fresh and excited.”
Some of Kouneva’s latest work can be heard on a VR project called The Mummy: Prodigium Strike, in collaboration with Universal’s The Mummy movie and escape room. After watching the Mummy movies for inspiration, Kouneva started work on the game’s score. It took many revisions, as she wanted to make it fit into the Mummy universe while being able to stand on its own. Also, because it’s a VR experience, she knew a traditional score wouldn’t fit right.
“The music ended up being ambient, without big bombastic themes and without much orchestra,” said Kouneva. “I used tension music for the heroes and ambient horror music for the enemies. My score also had to blend with the sound design and voiceover. Remember, the music is heard on headphones, so I had to take this into a consideration since audio in VR enters your brain directly.”
While Kouneva does have experience working on other VR projects, it’s still a “new frontier” as she put it. “The rules are being written now,” she said.
Kouneva says she’s been an avid PC gaming fan, and general geek, since she was young. Getting the opportunity to work on games is a dream come true for her, but it wouldn’t have happened without everyone’s favorite disguised robots, Transformers.
“How I got into games was a pure stroke of luck,” said Kouneva. After having worked on TV shows and movies since 2000, Kouneva found herself working with Steve Jablonsky, the Transformers composer. “He assigned me to compose action loops for the Transformers game,” she said. “I loved it so much, it felt like an epiphany! My music got approved instantly. I thought to myself, ‘this is the ‘lucky break’ all people dream to get. This was MY lucky break and I’d be damned if I don’t do the best I could with it.’ So I built a career as a game composer, with passion, hard work and perseverance.”
Now that she’s been making music for games, Kouneva goes back and plays those games to see how her work is implemented. “My favorites were Prince of Persia: Forgotten Sands and Gears of War 3 (I arranged on it), but also mobile games like Cookie Jam,” she said.
When not working on outside projects, Kouneva creates her own concept albums. These recordings allow her to experiment with sounds. Even better, her solo projects have led to high-profile jobs as well. “I’m driven by endless curiosity and commitment to artistic growth,” she said. “The result is fantastic – these albums lead to bigger and better scoring jobs. The Woman Astronaut lead to scoring the $30 million NASA exhibit Heroes and Legends at the Kennedy Space Center that will live on for decades.”
Rebirth of Id is Kouneva’s third artist album, and serves as a place for the music she hasn’t had the opportunity to make while scoring a game or movie. She says her music also is based on her life experiences, which helps the music and story she tells feel more authentic.
“I returned to my formative inspirations, classical orchestral music and Minimalism, and blended them with innovative electronic arrangements,” Kouneva said of Rebirth of Id. “The album has a unique structure – four tone poems, each telling its own story. The first tone poem is a futuristic sci-fi story about a young woman leader in a dystopian land that is experiencing severe drought; the second is a period drama about a woman - a former composer prodigy - who has renounced composing; the third is a supernatural romantic thriller in the vein of Black Mirror where a woman uses a VR device to travel back in time to a past life.”
In addition to her extensive list of credits, Kouneva’s work can be heard in three upcoming movies. Among them is “a terrific supernatural horror feature, Devil’s Whisper,” she said. “Two other features are coming out soon – Paul Salamoff’s sci-fi thriller Encounter, and the drama feature Blue. I composed the scores for all three of these films.”
The Mummy: Prodigium Strike and The Mummy escape room are available to experience right now in Los Angeles. The Heroes And Legends exhibit is also open at the Kennedy Space Center.
So what do you think? Are you interested in checking out other music from a AAA game composer? Which game that Kouneva worked on is your favorite? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.
