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The Obscure Music Club

Geinoh Yamashirogumi

  • By: Alo
  • Category: Artworks

Akira is a landmark in Japanese animation, it’s cyberpunk settings are a cult for 80/90’s imagery of many of us, almost like Blade Runner. The movie based on the manga, has the powerful soundtrack by Geinoh Yamashirogumi a Japanese musical collective founded on January 19, 1974 by Tsutomu Ōhashi. The collective consist of hundreds of people from different backgrounds: journalists, doctors, engineers, students, businessmen, etc. They are known for both their brilliant re-creations of folk music from around the world, as well as their fusion of various traditional musical styles (such as Indonesian Gamelan music and Noh, a form of classical Japanese music drama) with modern instrumentation and synthesizers. Their music has the power to bring people in a new transcendental dimension, but despite having performed internationally to a high degree of critical acclaim, they remain relatively unknown. After having made you listen to the first track of Akira ost, recommended by a friend, I give you a taste of what I believe is their absolute masterpiece, the 1990’s album Echophony Gaia.