For my last drive out of Oregon, I made a 5-hour mp3 CD of music I discovered ONLY during my time there.
It had some anime bits here and there, mostly themes which reminded me of particular good friends who had cosplayed characters from particular shows.
One particular piece "Fuku Shitari Yorisottari" from Senjou no Horizon feels uncannily American.
It starts of with a soaring whistle which feels like freedom, and fits with driving long drives when NO one needs to know exactly where you are, and your government has NO right to know where you are going...
The combination of pedal-steel and accordion reminds me of a certain region of Texas which was heavily settled by Czech and Slovak peoples. You can't always find eggs and bacon for breakfast but there are
kolaches joints everywhere. I can imagine making a video with combines shearing amber waves of grain, farm silos,and 'real' work: the kind that comes with the smell of diesel fuel and 120-weight heavy gearbox oil, not the kind that is stored on a cloud server in Chennai.
Another great opener is from the recent show 'Alderamin on the Sky,' and it's called 'Boukoku no Katjvarna.'
This music worked very well with big, tall, young SHARP geology, like the Rockies, the Wasatch, and buttes in Monument Valley, UT - as opposed to the worn-out old geezer mountains of my native New England.
One thing I started to think about while listening and driving across 140-mile wide valleys is that one musical trick to convey HUGE landscapes - is to have the melody drop, suddenly, often to a not an octave lower than the expected note in a chord progression.
Agree? Disagree?
The Alderamin OP has a couple of these drops, and another example is the masculine whistle of Ennio Morricone's theme of 'For a Few Dollars More.'
Listen for that whistle to DROP, while the low note of the jaw-harp rises:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLXQltR7vUQ (Ignore the visuals.)
Male whistling + Western theme = usually badass character, even in anime.
Lastly - SABATON was great for helping me pump the brakes in time on some of the LONG, STEEP (8%!!) curvy canyon descents.
