One listen for this one.

The first time I heard this song was a somewhere around the early to mid-noughties as part of a flash animation. I’ve listened to it here and there since as I find it enjoyable enough. Decided to write about it due to being up to it in a playlist comprised of a massive amount of music I’ve acquired over the past three years.

Anyway, I think it’s good that I was able to get the amount of words out that I did, but I don’t think I say much. A lot of this feels disconnected. It describes the song, but it doesn’t flow.

Yuki Kajiura’s (梶浦 由記) “Le Grand Retour” is from Noir Original Soundtrack II, one of the soundtracks for the anime known as Noir.

I hope you enjoy.

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Rumbling, rattling and sound spreads out with a graveness. Soon woodwind comes in, uplifting, rising, looking to wake and bring forth. Percussion rolls out in parts; soon it all moves to a livelier state.

The beat is steady and sounds move forward, carrying a sense of adventure and openness. There is a grandness and perhaps spectacle and there is a beauty in it all, and perhaps also a sense of innocence, but soon that all suddenly disappears.

A greater tension; a menace comes through. Some sound draws long whilst others stay short, and they seem to crest over the previous landscape with a greater heaviness. It’s a different form of the same sense of dramatic.

The sounds grow heavier; the beat stays steady and more minimal whilst guitar plucks and chugs away, and it all moves to a point in which it can dissipate.

In the aftermath a bell rings out, strings draw and piano keys roll with a fragility. It seems all is lost and the keys are revealing those last moments, but it’s not long before the woodwind returns, heralding a second wind.

Soon the sounds return to the joyous and adventurous, moving beyond the heaviness. In a sense it is celebratory here and they all rise to that final moment and strike as the song ends.