Fouk on 25 years of making music, staying inspired, and the techniques behind their soundDaniel Leseman and Hans Peeman started making trance in their attic at age 14 in 1999, but it wasn’t until their early 30s that they found their true creative calling with Fouk and their vinyl-first label, Outplay. The Dutch producers have since become beloved in the underground deep house scene, thanks to a sophisticated, distinct blend of loose and dusty house drums, swirling and spacey synth parts, and downright funky basslines.
Now both 42 years old, the creative relationship the duo has evolved, and they’re optimistic about Fouk’s future. But they admit that their momentum stalled after the pandemic; their focus shifted to their families and other job prospects, and inspiration was tough to find. Fouk were forced to rediscover their groove.
Thanks to their recent EP releases, 2025’s Get It Done and 2024’s Mirage, Daniel and Hans are having just as much fun in the studio as they were almost 30 years ago, with a dynamic that works unusually well.
Get It Done EP by Fouk
“We always say it’s a second marriage,” says Hans.
“Yeah, and we sometimes fight like it’s a second marriage,” adds Daniel, as they both chuckle.
More amusing still is that Fouk are constantly finishing each other’s sentences throughout the interview. As Daniel starts articulating an idea, Hans will jump in and finish the thought when Daniel pauses, and vice versa. It’s incredibly fun to observe.
However, this marriage-like rapport is a boon when they’re in the studio. These two producers bounce off each other in conversation just as they do with creative ideas.
“Sometimes, he’s doing something on the synths,” explains Daniel. “And I’ll say, ‘Okay…What are you doing?’ and he’s like ‘Just wait, just wait. I’m getting it.’”
“I don’t give up easily,” chimes in Hans. “And sometimes, it doesn’t work — but I’ll just chuck something in and see if we can shift or transpose it to see if it’ll fit.”
Their relationship also makes room for honesty. When an idea isn’t working, they can candidly say to one another, “I’m not feeling this — let’s do something else.” The duo aren’t churning out finished tracks every week, and they’ve learned to work more efficiently since the pandemic.
Hans’ home studio. Image: Press
“We couldn’t find any inspiration after COVID; our lives changed,” says Hans — he and Daniel are both parents now. “Our time in the studio is limited, so we had to re-find our groove,” he continues. “And with that came a different way of creating. We have one, sometimes two days a week together.”
Fouk’s new groove involves Hans creating snippets and ideas, which Daniel often jams over the top of with their go-to synths: the Sequential Prophet-6, Moog Sub Phatty, Korg Minilogue and Roland Jupiter-X and JP-8000.
“Once you have a starting point, it’s easy to get enthused”, begins Hans, as Daniel adds, “yeah, we bounce ideas around really quickly.”
“Also,” continues Hans, “a lot of times, just before we have to wrap up in the studio, we start something else since we’re already warmed up. Then, something totally new happens in the last half hour. It’s like, you have to quit, but you still get this really amazing idea — they’re the little seeds that you have to cultivate.”
Studio Utrecht. Image: Press
Watch any of Fouk’s social media videos, and you’ll see how much fun they have jumping around various synths, stitching together layers in a loop. Daniel praises the Prophet-6 for its lack of menu-diving and gorgeous sound, while Hans notes their frequent use of the Minilogue for its versatility across their tracks. Although many of these creative sparks lean on the duo’s arsenal of analogue synths, they admit that much of their signature sound has previously been crafted in the DAW.
“A lot of times people ask us, ‘You use a lot of analogue gear, right?’ But no,” says Hans. “Mostly, it was made in the box. But we have our ways for shaping the sound, using harmonic distortion on things—”
“And, of course, the use of samples, especially in our earlier productions, helps define the ‘analogue’ vibe,” adds Daniel.
Get It Done is largely sample-free, compared to Fouk’s earlier work, aside from a string sample on the track Floating. Fouk’s refined sound relies less on sampling old records and more on meticulous microtiming.
“If we have a drum loop going and we [want to] add a bassline, there have been times that we purposely move the bassline in front of the kick. And it just works,” explains Daniel. “The attack of the bassline is also a percussive element of course—
“It’s also analysing how these old records sound,” continues Hans. “Because it’s with live musicians; you’re not a robot, and that’s what we want to recreate as well. And, of course, classic hip-hop, the sample-based way of making music, that whole shifted feeling with the eighth notes…We don’t quantise anything. It’s mostly by hand, just shifting little bits. There’s a theory to it; it’s not just random.”
Hans’ home studio. Image: Press
For their drum sounds, the duo often sample vinyl breaks, use lo-fi sample packs, and building kicks and snares from scratch on their Behringer RD-9. This hybrid approach lets them combine their own sounds with human grooves. “If you sample a live drummer, you get that groove, that whole swing. And if you programme your drums on top of those transients, you have more organic sounding drums,” explains Hans.
It’s taken decades for Daniel and Hans to discover and perfect these techniques, which you can hear all over the Get It Done record. This EP, released via Freerange Records, also fulfils a 20-year ambition of the Dutch producers.
“We’ve been fans of the label since around 2005,” says Hans. “We were like, ‘We have to get a release on Freerange, if it’s remotely possible.’”
Two decades before releasing on Freerange, they’d travel to Germany to watch label founder Jamie (AKA Jimpster) perform. They befriended him and the Freerange team long before Fouk existed — but Fouk’s sound wasn’t always a fit for their dream label.
“Up until now, the sound and direction that we went was a little different than how Freerange was going,” explains Daniel. “Now, I think it’s all come together.”
Hans’ home studio. Image: Press
Get It Done signals where Fouk are heading next. Daniel and Hans have been building to this moment since a 2012 trip to the Arctic Circle, where they committed to a project rooted in the house music they’d discovered through labels like Freerange.
“It was a really special vacation,” recalls Daniel. “We took a train up north in Sweden, to a place where the sun was up for 24 hours in the summer. And I really remember talking about doing something new—we already had the Outplay label— but creating a new project together with the new sound that we found. Half a year later, we worked on the first tracks: Stuff Your Dad Likes, Cat Lady—”
Hans jumps in: “We would have loved to be in our early 20s and already have that sound…We were 30 years old when we started Fouk.”
A late start hasn’t stopped Fouk from finding their audience. The producers are still riding a high from their remix of Nathan Haines’ 2003 deep cut, Squire For Hire feat. Marlena Shaw, which enjoyed three weeks at number one on Traxsource’s Top 10 chart. Their remix came just a year after Shaw, a revered jazz vocalist, passed away, and four years after Phil Asher, the co-writer of the original track, died from a heart attack. As such, the project carried extra weight for Fouk.
Fortunately, after sending an early version of the remix to the label (Deeply Soulful vs Papa), the suggestion came to bring Haines onto the remix.
“We finished the version without the original saxophone parts because we didn’t have them,” says Hans. “We had the vocals, but we sampled a bit of the entire track just for texture. We sent it to the label, and they got the idea of asking Nathan to record new parts. We were like, ‘Yes, this is becoming more than just a remix!’”
Studio Utrecht. Image: Press
Since the Haines collaboration, Hans and Daniel have branched out into songwriting territory, which they see as part of Fouk’s future.
“We’ve made a release for Kraak and Smaak, the Dutch producers, on their label, Boogie Angst,” says Daniel. “We’ve worked together with some great, great bands, artists, and that was more songwriting—”
“Yeah, we basically wrote three songs for other artists,” adds Hans.
“We did an instrumental version and the [collaborators] wrote the vocals,” continues Daniel. “It was a really cool collaboration; it was definitely more songwriting based instead of house and club tracks.”
“It’s definitely a direction that we want to do more — write for other people, or produce for other people,” finishes Hans.
After more than 25 years, it might be surprising that Hans and Daniel remain so in sync. But they’re still finishing each other’s sentences and each other’s tracks. The second marriage, it seems, is going strong.
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