ReMix:Final Fantasy VIII "Your Smile" 4:00

Final Fantasy VIII: SeeDs of Pandora has welcomed many newcomers into the OCR fold as contributors, and we have another ready to have their shining moment with a featured mixpost. We already know "Eyes on Me" is a modern classic of VGM, but it's now time to channel my favorite instrumental version of it from FF8, "Julia", as debuting ReMixer feraldreams. and scene veteran Juan Medrano combine ambient effects, piano, and electric guitar, and mellow beats to ensure "Your Smile" -- yes, you, right over there! feraldreams. tells you exactly what you should hone in on:

"This track turned out to be very melancholic, sounding distant and dreamy. The main focus is the intertwined relationship of the muted piano which mostly follows the main theme of the track, and Juan's electric guitar adding to the theme and giving it new and original ideas."

Right off the rip, I love the sound of the combined piano & strumming here opening things up, which gave this piece more sonic depth compared to "Julia" while gently personalizing the approach. I really dug the production techniques with the supporting guitar at :11, which instantly gave me "A Rose for Zelda" vibes; after hearing Tepid's mix back in 2005, I've since been a sucker for anything with electric guitars combined with glimmering effects. We then hit more overt forks in the road with Juan's guitar work at :25 and the beats & bassline at :35, and right then you can be confident that this arrangement approach would be suffciently personalized. The percussion brought in at :31 adds a gentle touch of movement underneath the piece and comfortably clicks with the more ambient, ethereal-sounding effects. This does so much in the first formative moments, you'll no doubt enjoy the ride as it unfolds. Album co-director Jorito was full of praise for the instrumentation as well as the collaboration showing off a new side of Juan's performance chops:

"feraldreams.' lo-fi take on "Julia" creates a very lush and ambient soundscape. The dreamy, shimmering pads and clean guitar contrast nicely with the slightly distorted, processed piano and the interplay between the guitar solos and the piano are great; they hold the interest and also keep the track moving and exploring new territory. feraldreams. mentioned in passing something like "Hey, if there are some guys that would want to record some lines with an electric guitar over it, I'm all game". And since, as album directors, we really encouraged collaborations, I was glad we were able to connect feraldreams. and Juan together for this track. Also great to hear a different side of Juan's guitar playing. This more ambient style works very well in this track and shows off Juan's versatility well."

Arrangement-wise, beyond relying on Juan's guitar additions, feral used some great textural variations to iterate on different segments of the theme multiple times before moving onto the next one, so this is a very worthy example for other artists on squeezing extra juice from a relatively short source tune (~80 seconds) and getting loads of time out of it (4 minutes), as well as retaining a lot of the tone & instrumentation of the source while ensuring it didn't sound at all close to a carbon copy. Darkflamewolf is friends IRL with feraldreams. and identified a key use of this track for you IRL:

"It has an ethereal quality with all that lingering reverb and dreamy guitars layered on top of it all. It almost feels like music you'd kick on at bedtime on repeat loop and fall asleep to it. It's just that dreamy."

These SeeDs of Pandora collabs just keep on delivering with example after example of synergy that we're honored to share. This one's lovely and sentimental just like the original song, yet sonically broadened and ready to melt even more cold, cold hearts. Do let us know if you smile & select this track to dream a little dream with feraldreams. & Juan as your nighttime BGM!