INK: NEWALBUM 25th SEPTEMBER

In the spring of this year, Daan travelled through southern Spain and became fascinated by the black rubbish containers standing in the streets of an empty village in the morning. He felt like painting them, large-scale, with litres of black paint. But before he could even get started, he received a phone call asking him to do a solo show at a jazz café in Berchem. Berchem, where all good things in his career started; the first Dead Man Ray album, his first child, his first piano solo concert.. So, still with his mind focused on paint, he spontaneously replied: “Okay, but then only with songs by The Ink Spots.”

This groundbreaking American vocal quartet, who scored hits from the mid-1930s to the mid-1940s by combining pop, jazz, rap, blues, doo-wop and sophisticated harmonies, had a style entirely of their own. All their songs consistently featured the same intro’s, while their frontman’s high, polished vocals were repeatedly challenged by the deep spoken vocals of his counterpart within the band.

But this music, which has fascinated Daan for decades, is miles away from his own repertoire — and technique. So the man who had called him for the jazz gig, double bassist Fré Madou, spontaneously suggested joining him, and immediately brought in seasoned jazz guitarist Bruno De Groote as well.

A few intimate shows followed, including an anonymous appearance at the Gent Jazz festival as “Ink Ognito”, an “elderly Spanish painter”. But in order to interpret the songs truly intimately and make them his own, Daan began recording them at home, stripped down and bare, in his home studio. The combination of Daan’s minimalist guitar playing, Fré’s meandering bass lines and Bruno’s classy improvisations created the perfect fragile atmosphere for Daan’s warm voice to sing the lyrics softly and intimately, as if whispering directly into the listener’s ear.

And the lyrics called for exactly that. The common thread running through all Ink Spots songs is the man in love — or rather, the man who has lost love — hopelessly and romantically chasing after something he can never quite grasp. Heartbreak, obsession and jealousy: the full existential package. Sometimes lonely (“My Echo, My Shadow and Me”), sometimes shackled (“Prisoner of Love”), desperate (“The Gypsy”), fatalistic (“I’ll Never Smile Again”, “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore”), betrayed (“Do I Worry”), then defensive (“If I Didn’t Care”), or paranoid (“Whispering Grass”), self-mocking (“It’s Funny to Everyone But Me”), and, if necessary, chanting his way through it (“I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire”). And, at his happiest, briefly content with… nothing (“Nothin’”, “Java Jive”).

As we head towards another version of the 1930s, with the rise of manosphere types, it feels refreshing to hear love sung about the way it was a century ago. But all the other facets of that era also sound intriguingly relevant today: romance as escapism, an escape route after America’s Great Depression, and the longing for warmth against the backdrop of looming wars — just as then, and just as now.

As a visual designer, this music also provides an ideal playground for Daan to create a dystopian image for every song, forming the album’s black-and-white, ink-drenched a(i)rtwork and accompanying video clips. Check out the new video for “I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire”, filmed entirely on the (elevator-less) roof of Antwerp’s Boerentoren — another turbulent monument from that same 1930s era.

The album is also the perfect appetiser for Daan’s extensive “Crooner” trio theatre tour, running from winter 2026 through spring 2027, this time with Isolde Lasoen and Jean François Assy. And then comes the main course: a second album of new original songs, which he is currently working on at full musical speed.

Daan will present the album live on September 26, in the very place where it was made: his farm in Overijse.