Pounding taiko drums and chanting monks hit you like a motorcycle through Neo-Tokyo. AKIRA's 1994 Japanese soundtrack is Geinoh Yamashirogumi doing things nobody else even attempted. "Kaneda" opens with this wall of percussion and vocal layers that sounds like a ritual from the future.
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"Tetsuo I" and "Tetsuo II" build into something genuinely unsettling, all distorted gamelan and choral chaos. This isn't background music. It's a sonic event. Every track feels like it was composed for a world about to collapse in on itself.
The whole thing sits somewhere between traditional Japanese ceremony and pure psychedelic overload. Four tracks that hit harder than most full albums. If you've seen the film and never sat with the soundtrack alone, you're missing half the experience.