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It’s #GivingTuesday and pretty much anyone who’s a non-profit is crawling out of the woodwork and trying to stir up some financial love. And of course as a community supported public radio, we could always use a bit of help. That said, the nice thing about tossing KUTX a couple bucks is that you’re also helping our mission of providing a public platform for Austin’s finest and rising, who (especially if you’re sick of us at KUTX asking all the time) could definitely do with an extra dollar or two in the Holiday season.
SEE: songwriter-guitarist-multi-instrumentalist dan levine. If you get into a one-on-one chat with dan, you might classify him as pretty soft spoken. But that’s not from a lack of interesting things to say or complex sentiments to express; it’s just that when levine’s not teaching geography or sustainability studies here at UT, he typically lets his six-string do most of the talking – be it with The Infinites, Exercise, or his all-lowercase eponymous solo project.
And boy did dan put in the work on his latest solo release and debut instrumental full-length a-frame fantasies that just dropped last Friday. Between its masterfully looped-and-layered electric guitar arrangements and sturdy post-punk/indie framework, this LP really does feel like a symmetrical piece of aural architecture. Plus it proves that not every a-frame fantasy needs to be a hazy memory of late night Whataburger or a surreal premonition in an ominous Swedish commune.
Bouncing off the latter though, these dozen dreamy originals (which chronicle levine’s midsummer retreat to a Nova Scotia cabin) do capture that transcedentalist sense of isolation and of boundless, uninterrupted space. But after a successful cassette release show at Chess Club this past Saturday that cleaned out levine’s supply of tapes, there are plenty of digital copies of a-frame fantasies right there on dan’s bandcamp. So if you’re feeling generous, maybe channel the spirit of #GivingTuesday into paying for a-frame fantasies – because it genuinely is a piece of introspective art best enjoyed uninterrupted in full.
Only got time for one and can’t zone out too hard at work? Get comfy, press play on a-frame fantasies‘ abbreviated title track, and quickly find out what images, emotions, and meditations this big gift inspires. All we’ll say for now is this. Well done, dan. Well done.
