Free Shipping on orders over $125| We just got a fresh batch of anime soundtracks on vinyl, and they’re very, very good. Even if anime isn’t your usual aisle – stay with us. Some of these are genuinely boundary-pushing music that just happen to have been written for animation.
Okay, we need to talk about this one first, because the Noragami soundtrack has no business going as hard as it does. Taku Iwasaki – the same composer behind JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure and Soul Eater – built a score that treats genre like a suggestion rather than a rule. We’re talking techno, hip-hop, and rock slamming into traditional Japanese instrumentation, with rap verses showing up where you absolutely do not expect them. It sounds like what would happen if DJ Shadow produced a fight scene in a Shinto temple, and we mean that as the highest possible compliment. On opaque pink vinyl, no less. |
 Bonobo — Lazarus (Adult Swim Original Series Soundtrack) — Translucent Milky Clear Vinyl If Cowboy Bebop’s soundtrack rewired your brain in the late ’90s – and let’s be honest, it did – then you already know that director Shinichirō Watanabe treats music as a full cast member. His latest series, Lazarus, is an Adult Swim original animated by Studio MAPPA, and he assembled an absurd murderer’s row of talent for the score: Bonobo alongside Kamasi Washington and Floating Points. That is not a normal sentence. That is three artists who could each headline a festival independently, all composing for the same anime. Bonobo’s contribution on translucent milky clear vinyl is essential listening whether or not you’ve seen the show.  Evan Call — Violet Evergarden (Original Soundtrack) — 3LP VinylThree LPs. That’s how much room Evan Call’s orchestral score for Violet Evergarden needs, and it earns every second. Call is a Berklee-trained American composer working in Japan who wrote the kind of sweeping, emotionally devastating music that makes you cry on public transit (hypothetically – we’re not admitting anything). He also scored Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, so if you’ve been quietly weeping at that show too, now you know who’s responsible. This is the anime equivalent of a John Williams deep cut – the kind of score that works beautifully even if you’ve never seen a single frame.  Evan Call — Josee, The Tiger and the Fish (Original Soundtrack) — 2LP VinylSpeaking of Evan Call: here’s another one. Josee, The Tiger and the Fish is a gorgeous film about a reclusive young woman, a college student, and the messy, complicated work of actually connecting with another person. Call’s score is more intimate than his Violet Evergarden work – chamber-scale and tender, built around the kind of melodies that lodge themselves in your chest and refuse to leave. If you’re picking up the Violet Evergarden set, you should probably just grab this too. Consider it a matched pair.  Kensuke Ushio — A Silent Voice (Original Soundtrack)Kensuke Ushio did something remarkable with the A Silent Voice score: he built a soundtrack almost entirely around piano and ambient textures, using three-letter codes as track titles that he invented while composing. (The code “htb” stands for heartbeat, if you were wondering.) The whole thing feels less like a traditional film score and more like an art installation you can live inside – fragile, deeply personal, and rooted in silence as much as sound. Ushio also scored Devilman Crybaby for Netflix, which should tell you something about his range. This is a record that rewards headphones, low lighting, and nobody talking to you for about an hour.  Robotech — The Vocal Music Collection (LITA Exclusive Variant)And now for something completely different. In celebration of Robotech’s 40th anniversary, this is the first-ever vinyl pressing of the vocal tracks from the legendary 1985 series – all 17 of them, remastered, on limited edition colored wax with exclusive artwork. If you were the kid taping episodes off TV in the ’80s, you already know every word to these Minmei and Yellow Dancer songs and you don’t need us to sell you on this. If you weren’t that kid: Robotech is one of the foundational texts of Western anime fandom, and these synth-pop power ballads are a time capsule of an era when anime was still a delicious secret. The LITA exclusive variant won’t be around forever.  RESTOCKED: Hiroyuki Sawano — Attack on Titan Season 1 (Original Soundtrack) — 3LP VinylThis one keeps selling out and we keep bringing it back, because we’re not monsters. Hiroyuki Sawano’s Season 1 score is the record that kicked off the entire anime-on-vinyl wave – a thundering collision of electronic music, operatic vocals, and guitar-driven orchestral bombast that made the whole world pay attention. Sawano treats a TV soundtrack like a prog-rock concept album, and tracks like “Vogel im Käfig” and “Counter Attack-Mankind” hit with the force of a hundred-meter wall coming down. If you missed it last time, here’s your chance. Three LPs. No excuses. These aren’t just records. They’re mood boards. They’re alternate timelines. They’re proof that animation has always understood our feelings better than we do. Quantities are limited – because of course they are. The universe is fleeting, vinyl runs are finite, and your turntable deserves drama. Love,The Catloaf Crew 🐾 |
Fresh Wax Fridays : Anime Scores on Vinyl. Yes, You Need These.
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