 The film 's score was performed by the London Symphony Orchestra and conducted by Belgian composer Dirk Brossé. it was recorded in the United Kingdom at the Watford Coloseum and the London AIR Lyndhurst Hall and was mixed at the Manhattan Center Studios in the United States . In the liner notes to the album , Goldenthal describes the soundtrack as combining " orchestration techniques associated with the late 20th @-@ century Polish avant @-@ garde , as well as my own experiments from Alien 3 , and 19th @-@ century Straussian brass and string instrumentation . " In the film 's ' Making of ' featurette , Goldenthal states he used " ghostly choral " music when the Phantoms are emerging , in an attempt to give a celestial feeling , and focused on low brass clusters and taiko drum rhythms for violent scenes . When Aki talks about a dying girl , Goldenthal used a piano in order to give a domestic home @-@ like feeling to a completely foreign environment , also choosing to use a flute each time Aki focusses on Gaia , as he believed it to be the most " human kind of instrument " . 
