‘Genre-bending’ is a term that gets thrown around a fair bit these days, and while it’s true that sonic barriers seem to be collapsing more and more in contemporary music, DanFromUpstairs’ debut alum, ‘Hopeless Fables’ is an outstanding example that fully embodies this ethos.

This album comes from the mind of a Brighton-based music fanatic, who is captivated by using genre as a tool for creative self-expression. The result is an exciting musical project covering a wide palette of sounds. The album flows through shades of electronica, funk, hip-hop, jungle, rock, before landing on a dark, theatrical folk finale; but all woven together through Dan’s idiosyncratic production, seamless song transitions and otherworldly conceptual fabric, rendering the experience one continuous fever dream.

A number of years ago, Dan decided to tick off a bucket list item and began creating an album. At the time, he wasn’t aware of how long this would take, as the vision for the album kept expanding, various featured vocalists and instrumentalists had to be procured to fit in with said vision, and his music production skills improved continually, causing him to go back over and refine the tracks multiple times. During this process, a pleasant and unexpected surprise transpired and Dan realised that this would in fact become a concept album. As this became more apparent, various themes materialised, the song titles began to name themselves, and it became clear how all these songs would fit together.

The finished product asks us; what if the spirits that controlled our fate were just as hopeless as we are? Some people believe that there’s poetry to the universe, that there’s a divine plan in place, that an event such as two people falling in love could be the work of a celestial inevitability, that death comes when the time is right. But what if death was flawed and clumsy? What if love could misfire? Would we still try to find order amidst the chaos?