Not to over-hype things, but my read on the harp is this:
In the context of faded media music from the past, the crisp live harp is real: it's the present. Organic. The harp rings out with lucidity while enrobed in the fingerprints of time. The eerie reminiscence of this piece to so many past scraps of BOC's work all woven masterfully into three minutes evokes, as others have put it, absolution. Release--as a release, and a return! And possibly as a completion of Boards of Canada.
And, to me, if this ends up being the final Boards of Canada release, then in a sense BOC is dead and their body of work enters an afterlife: so you hear angelic harp. The vocals fading in at the end, a community of listeners that live on after the music is done. Followers.
It is really fitting in this context that the lucid harp comes in to play what I feel is the most quintessentially Boards of Canada melody I've ever heard. It captures that moment when you're one with your instrument and a melody just comes out of your fingers that feels like it was channeled through you by the universe, and you're just a medium. Like this is what BOC came to do. Culmination.
The past inside the present! Or, the whole of time in this one moment, perhaps
Verde Hexagon Hashbrown
