ReMix:Final Fantasy VIII "Fisherman's Horizon (Christmas Ver.)" 3:55

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas... everywhere you go. Including here, as we've got a special seasonal treat for you today with a track from the recently-released Scarlet Moon Christmas EP. Newcomer Goomin Nam is a Korean game composer who's worked on TalesWeaver, among many other titles. He contributed this very wintry, timely ReMix of "Fisherman's Horizon" for Jayson Napolitano/Scarlet Moons's project to put together some Christmas-style arrangements of Final Fantasy tunes. Jayson writes:

"Goomin didn't tell me what track he'd arrange, and I said, "We'll take whatever you can manage to come up with." I didn't expect him to arrange my second favorite track by Uematsu (after "Troian Beauty"). So I was super excited about his track. I'm really happy to see Goomin contributing to OCR, as he's a huge fan of games and game music, and I think this community is a good fit for him as such. When I saw his studio in Korea, despite it being really small, the walls were covered in media cabinets with games from all over the world. At the time, he was excited about playing Gran Turismo 6 and The Last of Us, so he does play a ton of stuff and appreciates all kinds of games and music. I'm hoping we'll see him do more arrangements like this in the future in addition to creating his super memorable soundtracks, which you can hear in TalesWeaver, the DJMAX series, and the Bar Oasis drink-making sim game for iOS."

I've still got a tree to set up & presents to wrap, so I'm going to let Larry do the heavy-lifting on the writeup side:

"Thanks a lot to Jayson for coordinating this sub; all five tracks from the Scarlet Moon Christmas EP are perfect for literally anyone's holiday playlist, with Jayson, Dale North, Goomin "Nauts" Nam, and the legendary Vince DiCola all doing a great job with their festive arrangements of VGM and Xmas standards.

I've been a fan of Goomin's ever since hearing his 2004 Touhou/Embodiment of Scarlet Devil arrangement, "Apparitions Stalk the Night," through Gamingforce Audio's Song of the Week contest, and his work on TalesWeaver alone was sweet, so it's cool to have him on board here with this FF8 tribute. The original song's already pretty mellow, but Goomin smoothed out "Fisherman's Horizon" even further via e-piano, tasteful string swells, and some oh-so-fine guitar work introduced at 2:21 to add that next level of curl-up-around-the-fireplace-and-roast-some-chestnuts relaxation. While you're listening to this, don't forget to grab the full Scarlet Moon Christmas EP before you melt up. :-)"

Ditto all that; regardless of what & how you celebrate, this is great music for staycations, gatherings, & anything involving good food and delicious company, or vice versa. A hearty welcome to Goomin Nam, and thanks to both him & Jayson for making our holidays a little brighter!