 The film 's score was performed by the London Symphony Orchestra and conducted by Belgian composer Dirk <unk> it was recorded in the United Kingdom at the Watford <unk> 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 " . 
