Daan (band)

Daan was already active for years when in 1999 the first CD Profools came out. It is a hard copy of songs from Stuyven that he recorded between 1993 and 1999. The influence of Dead Man Ray, Stuyven's previous project, can clearly still be felt, even though there are some electronic plays in the track list.

The second CD, Bridge Burner (2002), was a breakthrough, partly because Stuyven chose to go more into the direction of electronically flavoured dance music. The dance number "Swedish Designer Drugs" became a club classic and the frontman gradually gathered a live band around himself, consisting of top musicians like Isolde Lasoen (drums, vibraphone and backing vocalist), opera singer Gregory Frateur, Jeroen Swinnen (synthesizer and backing vocalist), Steven Janssens (guitar), Otti Van Der Werf (bass guitar), and Jo Hermans (trumpet and backing vocalist).

In 2004 Victory came out. Daan continued with Bridge Burner but pushed its artistic limits by experimenting with rock and dance. This CD turned out to be a smash hit: Stuyven obtained gold and won the ZAMU Award for best album of 2004.[1] The title song "Victory" and the instrumental dance track "Housewife" reached gold status and enhanced his live reputation. He appeared at many festivals, including Rock Werchter 2004 where he ascended the main stage one year later.[2]

Released in the second half of 2005, Cinema was a compilation CD with film music that Stuyven made for the cinema and TV films Verboden te zuchten, Meisje, Un honnête commerçant and Suspect.

Camera, his first DVD, appeared in the spring of 2006 and contained the AB concert of December 2005, an RTBF documentary and a couple of video clips.

In November 2006 the fourth album came out, titled The Player (PIAS), that obtained gold within a year. The single with the same name became a hit in the Ultratop 50 purely based on the number of paid downloads. In the second single "Promis Q" Stuyven further investigated the limits of artistic accuracy and created a bridge between the genres dance and German schlager.

At the ZAMU Awards of February 2007 Daan Stuyven was the only artist to achieve five nominations and two prizes. His "The Player" is rewarded as best video clip (DOP Carl Rottiers); the public selected the number as the best song of 2006.[3][4][5]

Stuyven unexpectedly brought the evergreen song "De lichtjes van de Schelde" together with the composer Bobbejaan Schoepen, who was awarded a Lifetime Achievement ZAMU Award. In March 2007 Stuyven dragged the song in the final of the VRT-programme Zo is er maar één, in which the most beautiful song in Dutch is searched. It also became the usual encore during a tour in 2007, his largest musical tour until then.

In the summer of 2008 an extra tour through Belgium followed, shortly afterwards followed by a number of concerts in which Stuyven made proper and contemporary arrangements from forgotten work from the period of Volt, Dead Man Ray, Supermarx and Running Cow.

On 25 April 2009 the fifth album, Manhay was released. Synthesizers have a less prominent role then in the earlier work of Stuyven. Guitar, piano and singing take the lead. At the occasion of this new disk also a club tour through Flanders had place. In that year, the album stood interruptedly in HUMO's top 20 of Belgian albums since it came out.

On 8 January 2010 Stuyven and the group Absynthe Minded received four prizes each at the 2009 MIA's. Stuyven won the MIA for best male solo artist and was also awarded prizes for best author/composer, best video clip with Exes and best graphical design with Manhay.[6] At the MIA's 2010 Stuyven was again among the winners. On 7 January 2011 he obtained the MIA for best male solo artist, just like the year before.[7]

This album came out on 26 November 2010. It mainly contains restyled versions of older titles of Daan, apart from two new numbers ("Protocol" and "I'm What You Need"). All numbers are executed by Daan (zang, piano, gitaar), Isolde Lasoen (drums, song) and cellist Jean-François Assy (cello, backing vocals). The album was accompanied by a tour, albeit without the entire live band, but just with Stuyven, Lasoen and Assy.

In 2011 the album Concert came out. In April 2013 the album Le Franc Belge followed.

In December 2011 Daan gave a roof concert for the last edition of the Belgian charity action Music for life.

In August 2013 an incident occurred as Stuyven stood drunk on stage at the festival Linkerwoofer. After half an hour the band members left and the concert was entirely shut down.[8] In October 2013 the single "La Crise", a song reflecting the misery of the contemporary European economic crisis containing Greek music (Greece was among the most vulnerable countries), became infamous in Greece as some local media perceived it as an insult against the country.[9] To clarify that he did not criticize Greece but only ironically chants about the European crisis in general, he also added Greek subtitles in the YouTube-video.[10]