Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles - Toadstool Forest
63Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles was developed by The Game Designers Studio. It was released for the Gamecube in 2003 and 2004. Its music was composed by Kumi Tanioka, and in 2020 was remastered with the help of Hidenori Iwasaki.
Something about this piece manages to envision both a melancholic nostalgia of days gone by and a cozy feeling of warmth in the now. I'm not sure how it does both at the same time, but perhaps the original instrumentation, using many older instruments such as those from the Renaissance and earlier, may influence my interpretation of the first. It really was tough to decide what to do to match the crumhorn, but surprisingly a flugelhorn did the job really well, despite not having that nasally in-your-face kind of sound.
Anyway, yes it *is* winter and I *am* surrounded by snow and freezing temperatures, so a "toadstool forest" maybe isn't thematic with the weather but wherever that sense of coziness comes from matches my experience hiding from the cold in my house under a blanket. Close enough!
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