This was an easy scenario to conjure, but in fact, Rios is doing the opposite. He's going to the city where dreams are made to start all over again. "I want to be in that place where you just have your sound, and these people have probably never heard of you."

Rios followed a girl to Flanders in the mid 1990s and stayed to make music. He was successful immediately. "Maybe it has to do with the fact that I'm the only Puerto Rican here," he tells me in his trademark quiet, dulcet voice. "The songs were sort of exotic."

Although he has only two albums and a just a few recognisable songs - most notably "Broad Daylight" and "Angelhead" - he consistently sells out show after show and draws giant crowds to festival stages to hear his sometimes understated, sometimes upbeat Latin-infused pop, with hints of jazz and plenty of elec- tronics. With numerous television and radio appearances - and now a collabo- ration with jazz and classical pianist Jef Neve and percussionist Kobe Proesmans - Flemish audiences simply never tire of him.

Which is why, contrary to what you read a few months ago, the 32-year-old has not left Belgium behind. He is rather splitting his time between the city that never sleeps and Ghent, the city that raised him to be a singer.

Lisa Bradshaw: You were still a teenager when you came to Belgium from Puerto Rico, but you had already played guitar in a band.
Gabriel Rios: Yeah, it was sort of like a punk rock band, but not very dangerous [laughs]. Then I started getting interested in weirder stuff, and that's how I got in contact with Belgian music, which back then was the weirder stuff, like dEUS. I thought, if this strange blend is on the radio, I can do it, too. And I saw Belgium as European, so I thought it was this huuuuge place!

Then all of a sudden, I met this girl from Belgium. I've talked a lot in the press about meeting this girl. When I think about it now - I don't want to destroy this romantic tale, but what went with that was also a feeling of wanting to go some- where drastically different. Europe for me at that time was still a very romantic place. So I enrolled in the art school in Ghent. It gave me purpose. I studied painting and sculpture and then made a record.

Just like that?
I met Jo Bogaert [another expat, Bogaert came to Flanders from the US and founded the band Techtronic, whose "Pump Up the Jam" was a world-wide dance hit], and he introduced me to samplers and beats. I made both the albums like that. It was easy in the sense that everything started to work, and I could go from one thing to another. In New York, this kind of thing would have been impossible. Here I could take my time to find my way. Music here is a big deal, and there are so many opportunities. There are so many festivals and a circuit. It was like going to school and learning.

As you went from your first album En Vivo to your second, Angelhead, your work got more electronic.
It did, it surely did. It got really cold somehow. I wanted to make something with really cold sounds, but then when I got what I wanted, I didn't want it anymore. I was playing a lot of festivals, so I geared towards pop-dance songs that we could play live. It was something that I had to get out of my system, but I realised that is wasn't what I wanted to do anymore. I tried to remember what kind of music I used to like. And what I liked were songs where the singer/songwriter was actually singing to you, more of a direct connection. I realised that maybe that's what I should be doing. Recently, you have acoustic segments, even at festi- vals, where someone plays for thousands and thousands of people, and they really listen. That's going back to how music really was. To me, it's a challenge now to make songs that powerful.

Hence your collaboration with Jef Neve and Kobe Proesmans, which has once again turned into something extremely successful for you.
I had played with them both before, and I realised those were the three elements I needed: piano, drums and guitar. When you are in a bar or in someone's house, and there's a guitar, piano and percussion, you can't hide. So that's how it started; we started stripping it down. Jef is very instinctive and has an emotional style. I loved the vibe that he gave me. And with audiences, we were also connect- ing that way. We were incredibly enthu- siastic about being challenged again. We were kind of like kids, and that kind of enthusiasm shows in the songs. They're very playful; I think audiences are feeling what we feel.

So how do you describe the music the three of you are making?
Old Puerto Rican classics and pre-pop when people were arranging it - when someone was writing the music and someone else arranging it and someone else playing it. It's sort of a craft element. There are a lot of songs on the new album that are pop songs, it's just that we're playing them with only piano, drums and guitar.

So you've made an album as a trio.
Yes, it's called The Dangerous Return, and it comes out next month. I got to work with people who make arrangements for classical music - a lot of woodwinds and brass and crooner-ish vibes. Strange things that I've never lived but that I always liked. I'm working with people who see music in a very different way than those that I've worked with before, which is really cool.

So why are you spending so much time in New York then?
Sometimes I did these solo gigs where I went to Scotland or Ireland, for instance, and the feeling I had...I was alone, I just had my guitar. I wanted to be in the position again where I play my new songs for people who don't know me, where I have to create another life for myself. It's a cliché to go to New York and look for that, but it really is like that there. You don't have time to prepare anything or even think about yourself too much. People are connected, and the crowds are really warm. It's not what I expected, but it gives me a lot of energy.

I go to a boxing gym in the middle of Brooklyn, which is very sweaty and rusty, and I put the gloves on, and I don't even know why I'm doing it, and the trainer says ‘just react'. I'm always thinking, and he says ‘just react'. That's the feeling I get from New York; you don't have time to think. It's me and the guitar; there is no time to think about it. You just have to start playing and singing. Maybe that's what I was looking for.

Gabriel Rios, Jef Neve and Kobe Proesmans
10 September, 20.30 Openlucht Theater Rivierenhof Turnhoutsebaan 246 Deurne (Antwerp)
www.openluchttheater.be