“sonic architecture”

July 18, 2023 11:24 AM

The Unexpected Genius Behind Akira's Legendary Score [SlashFilm] There's never been anything quite like the soundtrack to the anime classic "Akira." To this day, the pulsating rhythms and otherworldly chants still sound unlike any other music put to film. That uniqueness is due to the unorthodox approach of composer Shoji Yamashiro, whose background in amateur musicianship allowed him to create a score completely outside the realm of professional tradition. "Akira" utilizes a host of sounds that may seem unfamiliar to Western ears. The soundtrack is an eclectic mixture of traditional folk music and digital synthesizer programming, eliciting a raw and primal feeling amidst the futuristic cyberpunk skyline of Neo-Tokyo. Yamashiro incorporated a form of Indonesian music called gamelan jegog, which stems from Bali and is made up of fast, intense rhythms played on bamboo instruments. The composer also drew from the chants of Noh, traditional Japanese theater. Combined with polyrhythmic drum machine beats and synths tuned to gamelan microtonal scales, these styles give a sense of ritualistic tension to the dystopian world of "Akira." [YouTube][Geinoh-Yamashirogumi "Kaneda" from AKIRA]

• Inside the Daring Score of the 1988 Anime Masterpiece Akira [Muse by Clio]

“According to its website, Geinoh Yamashirogumi is "an experimental group that seeks and verifies the original lifestyle of humankind promised by genetic DNA" before being a performing arts group, and is a base for "criticism of civilization that acts." Learning from the wisdom of the traditional community, and eliminating specialization and single functioning, the steady and sincere "group creation" and "person creation" is the true value of the multi-performance community Yamashirogumi. Known previously for faithful renderings of folk styles from around the world, the group broke new ground with their 1986 album Ecophony Rinne, a piece in four movements structured around the cycle of birth, death and rebirth, which fused percussion from Japan and Tibet with Noh music, Balinese gamelan, and midi synthesizers to form ethereal and expansive sound that seems too large to fit within categories like new age or "4th world." Geinoh Yamashirogumi remain obscure, in spite of the success of Akira, but with this album their contribution to the development of electronic music was substantial.”

• The Explosive Power of Geinoh Yamashirogumi’s ‘Akira’ Score [Dread Central]

“Adopting an exceptionally globally aware approach to their music, Geinoh Yamashirogumi’s exciting blend of folk music from around the world, electronic elements, and choirs immediately captured Ôtomo’s attention. Not only would the group’s diverse sound palette resist any direct association with Japan’s history, but it would also help shape and support the film as it developed. Despite never having composed for a movie before, Ôtomo placed his complete trust in Yamashiro’s abilities and a literal blank cheque in his hand. The only requests Ôtomo made were that Geinoh Yamashirogumi deliver a “festival” and a “requiem” track. With animation not even started, Ôtomo would then use these as, what he called, “sonic architecture”. However, after early segments of Akira were shown to Yamashiro, he became inspired to expand his contributions and created a complete score for the film, which Ôtomo happily accepted. By becoming so heavily involved so early in Akira’s development, this open exchange of inspiration and creative energy bolstered Akira from the inside out. Both visionaries in their respective arenas, the partnering of Geinoh Yamashirogumi and Ôtomo is perhaps one of the most outstanding cinematic examples of serendipitous symbiotic creativity. ”

posted by Fizz (42 comments total)

This was the first film score I ever purchased, from the ludicrously overpriced 'import' section of Tower Records. Still absolutely phenomenal, and it was a wild moment when I instantly recognized a snip of the Doll's Polyphony being used in Boots Riley's "I'm a Virgo".

Seems like a lot of musicians I love have been building off of this score recently as well - BLVCK CEILING's 'kaneda' starts with a classic loop of the original character track and then mixes it into a sweetly melodic trap-beat mood piece, whereas Ghettoscraper's 'KNDA' works from the same roots and builds into an anxious chopped and screwed bass crawl. Lots of other neat mixes and groovy experimentation on the witch-house.com tribute to Akira, as well.
posted by FatherDagon at 12:05 PM on July 18, 2023 [14 favorites]

Re-watching this in 4K recently, it felt like a completely different film. If you have the means to see it in a theatre re-release or access to a home setup that allows for that kind of viewing, I cannot recommend it enough. Everything is improved by this upgrade in fidelity: sounds, animations, score, you name it.

And regarding FatherDagon's comment, its not at all surprising to hear how influential that score is, and how its made its way into other samples/remixes/etc. I'll be checking out those other links later tonight.

This is such an amazing film and it has so much going for it. It can feel a bit obtuse the first time you approach it but to my eyes & ears, its also a film that benefits from multiple re-watches as there's just so much going on. The first time you kind of get overwhelmed by it all.
posted by Fizz at 12:43 PM on July 18, 2023 [5 favorites]

It's an amazing score.

FPP needs a KANEDAAAAAAAAA tag
posted by mcstayinskool at 12:51 PM on July 18, 2023 [17 favorites]

rasera rasera rase rase rasera
posted by detachd at 12:53 PM on July 18, 2023 [8 favorites]

A friend dubbed this onto cassette for me in 1996 and it became formative to my taste. It was one of those things that, for sixteen year old me, was challenging to latch on to, but I kept revisiting it because I knew there was something there I needed to unpack. Much like the film itself, I suppose.

I bought it on DVD, maybe in 2002ish? It was my first time seeing a decent copy of the film - I'd previously taped a copy off the SciFi channel - and in the DVD extras, there was a brief behind-the-scenes clip about the making of the soundtrack. Some of the commentary by the composer felt a little bit... I don't know, "I'm a secret genius" type stuff that's kind of super-decorative around the novel emergence of MIDI sequencing. And that's fine! Sometimes I miss the mystique that's been replaced by an unending stream of tutorial videos explaining away how to do everything.

Somehow, after all these years, the music of the final track, Requiem still manages to get me choked up when I'm listening on a good set of headphones. It's not because of the film context, it's just really touching music.
posted by Leviathant at 1:15 PM on July 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

I didn't remember the soundtrack to Akira at all, just being mostly confused by the movie ages ago. But now that I'm listening to it (at archive.org), I definitely recognize things that were sampled, and its influence on some other music that I'm more familiar with.
posted by Foosnark at 1:17 PM on July 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

Geinoh Yamashirogumi is "an experimental group that seeks and verifies the original lifestyle of humankind promised by genetic DNA"

How can you afford your
DNA lifestyle?
posted by The Tensor at 1:17 PM on July 18, 2023 [2 favorites]

I would venture to say that the soundtrack has sounds that seem unfamiliar to any ears. It was and remains groundbreaking.
posted by sudasana at 1:20 PM on July 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

FPP needs a KANEDAAAAAAAAA tag

Don't forget a TETSUUUUUOOOO tag to go with it.

I remember picking up a copy of the Akira soundtrack at a cool CD shop in Washington DC during a senior class trip for my school newspaper, and having to wait until I got home to actually listen to it because I didn't own a portable CD player yet. I spent the entire bus ride back poring over the questionably translated liner notes and trying to imagine the music in my head based on my one viewing of the film at a friend's house. When I finally gave it a spin I was blown away all over again.

Now I want to see if I can finally track down any of the Geinoh Yamashirogumi's other recordings.
posted by Strange Interlude at 1:28 PM on July 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

Funny enough, I was trying to purchase the soundtrack album last week, and kind of gave up in frustration because I didn’t know what was the best version of the album.
There’s only one track available on iTunes, and I couldn’t find the Japanese import CD I remembered a friend of mine having back in the early nineties.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 1:29 PM on July 18, 2023

My first encounter with Akira was an Nth generation VHS dub that contained some other anime including a rather disturbing piece I think called Black Widow which I won't describe here.

I finally saw it in a more suitable presentation many years later on DVD.

The soundtrack is both iconic and elusive in my mind. If I were to hear some part of it in the wild I'd probably recognize it as being from Akira, but I cannot sit here and bring to mind any of its music at all.

I think I should probably seek this one out. The film is very important to me, and this post makes me feel like I should have it and get to know it.

As far as what version to seek out... I'm looking at discogs and I'm seeing two distinctly different albums offered, with different track listings. One is the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, which has 4 tracks and the other is Akira Symphonic Suite, which is an entirely different rack listing with apparently none of the track in common.

Does one get both?
posted by hippybear at 2:10 PM on July 18, 2023

All that said, I would do long travel to see Akira in true 70mm format in an IMAX theater.

We used to have an IMAX theater here, but they tore it down. I'm still angry about that.
posted by hippybear at 2:12 PM on July 18, 2023

Capsule's Pride is another Akira-based album by Nathan Micay - it's good, and was pretty popular when it was released.
posted by sagc at 2:23 PM on July 18, 2023 [4 favorites]

I'm not normally someone who really even notices soundtracks but Akira was so unique it jumped out at me. I loved it and it's still in my memory.
posted by sotonohito at 2:24 PM on July 18, 2023

Love me some Balinese gamelan, even repurposed like this.

Is there a good way to listen to a licensed copy of this soundtrack in 2023? Spotify doesn't have it and copies on Amazon seem to be out-of-print prices. Best I could do is this YouTube playlist. It's hosted on an account called "Milan Records" so maybe it's legitimate? Wikipedia has some good info on the 1988 soundtrack release. It's 69:36 in length.
posted by Nelson at 2:25 PM on July 18, 2023

An absolutely phenomenal soundtrack. "Tetsuo" is my favorite track, but it's all amazing.

hippybear: Get the Symphonic Suite. If the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack is the same one I vaguely remember, it has dialogue from the film included with the music, whereas the Symphonic Suite is just the music.
posted by May Kasahara at 3:06 PM on July 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

As an aside and not intending to derail unless Really Remarkable Soundtracks is a reasonable shift in topic... I've only listened to the Everything Everywhere All At Once score by Son Volt once, but it was a soundtrack listening experience unlike any other I've had before. It's definitely one I need to acquire because, WOW.
posted by hippybear at 3:12 PM on July 18, 2023

I came in here to write exactly the first part of Father Dagon's comment, from it being the first soundtrack I ever bought, overpriced import, all the way to having just spotted it in "I'm a Virgo."
posted by Shepherd at 3:56 PM on July 18, 2023

Nelson: Best I could do is this YouTube playlist. It's hosted on an account called "Milan Records" so maybe it's legitimate?

This is the official Milan Records channel, yes, as linked from their website, and they released the soundtrack, so it all checks out. Personally prefer to listen to whole albums like that through YouTube Music, it’s less likely to do something silly than regular YouTube.
posted by Kattullus at 3:58 PM on July 18, 2023 [2 favorites]

This soundtrack was formative for my appreciation of film soundtracks, of electronic music, and of just weird, experimental stuff in general. I think awe is the best description of what I felt the first time I heard it, although awe was also my reaction to the film.

Speaking of other great film soundtracks, some of Johann Johannson's (RIP) work makes me feel the same way, and also the fantastic soundtrack to Annihilation by Ben Salisbury & Geoff Barrow, which never fails to give me chills.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 3:58 PM on July 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

Glad to see this appreciation thread. I've been meaning to rewatch the movie, but the pixel peepers have pointed out that the 4K scan is actually in many ways inferior to the original 1080p Blu-ray. So don't go wild trying to find it — like LOTR, there are tradeoffs.

And if you like the movie... read the manga. Seriously. It's one of those works that simultaneously establishes and perfects a trope. Same for Miyazaki's "Nausicaa" manga, which is criminally under-read.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 4:01 PM on July 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

Doh!
posted by sebastienbailard at 6:18 PM on July 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

Joey the Anime Man talks about the impact of the picture's release, the 35th anniversary, and discusses the brilliance of the score and sound design.

“I Watched AKIRA Again 35 Years Later...”—Joey Bizinger, 13 July 2023

To celebrate the 35th anniversary of the legendary 1988 Otomo Katsuhiro film "Akira", I wanted to talk about it to convince you all to go and watch it.

posted by ob1quixote at 7:00 PM on July 18, 2023

How Manga Was Translated for America (gift link)

The publisher not only flipped the page order, so that [Akira] could be read in the Western style, but also flipped the pages themselves, creating mirror images of each page so that the panels would read from left to right
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 7:21 PM on July 18, 2023

It wasn't just Marvel/Epic that flipped Akira. Otomo and his studio redrew several parts of the manga, one famous example being the number tattoo that appears on a certain character's hand. You can see a handful of these redraws in the excellent artbook Akira Club.
posted by May Kasahara at 8:02 PM on July 18, 2023

It's fantastic. I've also enjoyed this from Yamashirogumi (1981).
posted by grobstein at 8:48 PM on July 18, 2023

The original Ghost in the Shell soundtrack was the one for me but this one is definitely memorable, too.
posted by atoxyl at 9:18 PM on July 18, 2023 [3 favorites]

I bought the CD at my local comics store in the early 90s when I was a ypunf teenager into grunge. It was musically transformative and, looking back, probably helped prepare my brain for Philip Glass, Steve Reich, actual Indonesian gamelan music, Stereolab, Tortoise, Talk Talk, Can and all the great ambient, electronic and trip hop I later came to enjoy. Just checked, and AKIRA OST is streaming in 24-bit 192 khz on Qobuz -- I will be listening to it in that format very soon! The rest of Geinoh Yamashirogumi's discography remains elusive...
posted by kdilla at 9:30 PM on July 18, 2023 [2 favorites]

I watched Akira for the amazing art and animation. I was not prepared for the score to be equally mesmerizing. Great stuff.
posted by Doleful Creature at 10:11 PM on July 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

I got obsessed with the soundtrack in college. After graduation I had a coworker traveling to Japan who asked if anyone wanted them to bring anything back so I gave her a list of the other Geinoh Yamishirogumi albums I could find references to online. She brought back Ecophony Rinne and Ecophony Gaia. They didn’t quite capture me in the same way but definitely helped expand my musical appreciation and interests. It looks like they exist on YouTube if people want to check it out. I wish they had a more legitimate release on streaming services.
posted by babar at 10:52 PM on July 18, 2023 [2 favorites]

I haven't watched Akira in a very long time and didn't know about the 4K remaster or that I can watch it with my Crunchyroll subscription so it is now definitely high on my list of things to watch. Maybe it's time to give the manga a re-read as well.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 12:03 PM on July 19, 2023

If you haven't heard Bwana's 2016 remix of the Akira soundtrack, "Capsule's Pride" check it out! "Nightfall in Neo-Tokyo" is a banger.
posted by anthill at 3:56 PM on July 19, 2023

kdilla: Just checked, and AKIRA OST is streaming in 24-bit 192 khz on Qobuz -- I will be listening to it in that format very soon!

Listen to what you like, of course, but you might want to read Chris "Monty" Montgomery's very detailed writings on why "HD Audio" is a nonsense scam, if you want to save your money and bandwidth.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 12:43 PM on July 20, 2023

Didn't see much in that Monty article comparing lower sampling rates, higher sampling rates, and true analog zero-sampling recordings and how all these play against each other.

Honestly the whole thing read a bit like a screed by a true believer desperate to make his point.

I have some 24/96 recordings that do recreate things like cymbal noises better than CD audio does on my equipment.

I find it telling that his first suggestion for better sound is "get better headphones". This neglects everyone not listening to headphones and is in and of itself assuming something about the reader that is not explicit to the readership.
posted by hippybear at 12:58 PM on July 20, 2023

hippybear: If you read the article, he explains how the sampling theorem proves that there's no difference between higher sampling rates once you go beyond what the human ear can hear. The article goes through the science behind this in great detail. To call Christopher Montgomery, one of the world's leading experts on digital audio, "a true believer desperate to make his point" is a bit ignorant, to be honest.

I'm not saying your 24/96 recordings can't sound better than the CD version, but have you considered that it's because it's a remaster, not because of the sample rate or bit depth? The correct way to compare is to downconvert that 24/96 recording to, say, 16/48, and then compare those two. The CD version may be an older master that's mixed differently, etc.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 1:17 PM on July 20, 2023

I didn't call Montey that, I said his article read like a screed written by one of those. There is a gigantic difference.
posted by hippybear at 1:40 PM on July 20, 2023

And no, it's not a remaster situation. Nine Inch Nails was releasing the same master of recordings on CD and in 24/96 and I have both of those and on my system, in my house, I can hear the difference.

Even saying "downconvert and compare" is useless in these conversations because then the conversation is about the method of downconversion.

But these NIN recordings I have, I mean Trent is pretty much an audiophile, and he put these out at the same time. He wanted the 24/96 version in the wild because he felt it was better than the CD version. I don't think he thought it was superior to LP, but I haven't read anything about that which I can remember right now.
posted by hippybear at 1:44 PM on July 20, 2023

I'm not saying your 24/96 recordings can't sound better than the CD version, but have you considered that it's because it's a remaster, not because of the sample rate or bit depth?

I'm just going to say that the only high bitrate/bitdepth recordings I have are old rips of rare vinyl.
posted by mikelieman at 1:56 PM on July 20, 2023

The reason people say you need to downsample and compare to really see what difference there is, is also that if you're listening to the "CD version", you're presumably listening to a CD player with its D/A converter , preamps, etc., while if you're listen to a 24/96 version, you're probably using some sort of digital player with a different signal path. It's essential to compare using the same signal path so nothing but the variables you want to compare are different.

But, again, if you want to say "I don't care about the science, I can hear a difference, good for you. Just know that information theory and the sampling theorem is no less proven than, say, gravity or the speed of light.

As for the analog vs. digital debate, predictably, Monty has an enlightening video about that too, which also explains and illustrates generally why a frequency limited signal can in fact be sampled and then reproduced perfectly by a digital system with a sampling frequency twice the max frequency. It's not an approximation, it's literally identical, and can't mathematically be anything else.

This stuff is really not up for debate, although "audiophiles" everywhere are happy to pay hundreds of dollars for speaker stands that compensate for the Earth's rotation or whatever.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 2:26 PM on July 20, 2023

Didn't see much in that Monty article comparing lower sampling rates, higher sampling rates, and true analog zero-sampling recordings and how all these play against each other.

Not trying to be a dick here but that’s what the whole thing is about - on a technical level, not based on his subjective opinion about what sounds good.

Honestly the whole thing read a bit like a screed by a true believer desperate to make his point.

It’s a screed by a technical person making a point on the basis of his strongly held technical opinions, but he’s very knowledgeable in that domain so it’s a point worth making. I get that it can be obnoxious to link this kind of thing every time somebody has a personal opinion about audio formats but it’s a good resource for an introduction to how (a somewhat opinionated, but legit) DSP expert thinks about the subject.
posted by atoxyl at 2:27 PM on July 20, 2023

I have some 24/96 recordings that do recreate things like cymbal noises better than CD audio does on my equipment.

96 KHz sample rate could theoretically give you a little more high end/less aliasing on high frequency sounds, if the original CDQ conversion was less than ideal. 24-bit shouldn’t have much effect at all on how you hear cymbal noises because it’s just lowering the noise floor.

(a lot of sounds that appear on old NIN records were probably sampled at much lower quality than CDs, though)
posted by atoxyl at 2:35 PM on July 20, 2023

(a lot of sounds that appear on old NIN records were probably sampled at much lower quality than CDs, though)

Sure, but the sounds that actually are on NIN records are the sounds that Trent wanted to be there.

is also that if you're listening to the "CD version", you're presumably listening to a CD player with its D/A converter , preamps, etc., while if you're listen to a 24/96 version, you're probably using some sort of digital player with a different signal path

I mean, I'm feeding a digital stream from my CD player into my amp which is doing the stream decoding there, which is also what I'm doing with the higher bitrate streams. So I assume it's all a stream of 1s and 0s being interpreted by the same bit of electronics, but maybe you have more technical details about how the stream coming from my CD player that has no D/A associated with it is different from the stream coming through a different wire to the same audio D/A decoder...

But all I know is, for these few albums I have that seem to me to be a direct comparison, the other thing sounds better.

I'm leaving this conversation now.
posted by hippybear at 2:40 PM on July 20, 2023