Kim Janssen ('Yaen-sen') is a Dutch singer/songwriter. He is a member of Dutch acoustic pop group, The Black Atlantic, but also releases music under his own name. His début solo album, The Truth Is, I Am Always Responsible (2009) was released on Volkoren records; his sophomore effort, Ancient Crime (2012) and The Lonely Mountains on Snowstar Records.
Janssen grew up following his folks around various cities all over Asia. From little villages below the Himalayas, where he took long trips through the snow, to Bangkok, where the lights from skyscrapers and long lines of traffic would make the city glow long after young Kim had fallen fast asleep.
Sometimes he stayed up at night drinking coffee and playing his guitar behind his desk, humming along softly so as not to wake anybody up. He found he could draw from his memories and make up stories, even visit all the places he missed and the friends he had left behind.
It gave some comfort even if it was a little tarnished, because you can't shake a wistfulness for the old days. He returned home to Holland where he borrowed a four track and a mic from an acquaintance and recorded his songs, putting them on a cd and hiding it under his bed.
It made its way however into the hands of a manager in New York by the name of Lance Labreche and before Kim knew it he was covering up against a harsh winter in New York City. In the spring he took a train up into Massachusetts to a small town tucked away in the Berkshire hills.
He spent ten days in an old, abandoned train station where producer Robby Baier had built a studio and kept most of the many instruments he had collected over the years. Kim sang and played his guitar parts and also found an old acoustic piano, sleigh bells, a fender rhodes, a howler, some thunder and a little toy piano.
Robby invited his friends to come over and play drums, upright bass, pedal steel string guitar and trumpet. Kim had also been fortunate enough to cross paths with Marla Hansen who he had been listening to on Sufjan Steven's “Songs for Christmas” all winter, and managed to convince her to sing and play viola one afternoon in her apartment in Brooklyn between tours with My Brightest Diamond and The National.
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