CARM was created by a band who's musical tastes, like most people's, are wide ranging. From the music of your people, to the music your parents played when you were growing up. From things written a hundred years ago, to music that was released last week. It was decided to start a band with no musical limitations or constrictions, however some form of grouping was necessary. Keeping any labeling of the styles intentionally vague, and going more for feel than "genre". They came up with the colours.

Three different bands within a band. The green, the red and the blue. Or acoustic stuff, rocky/punky stuff and heavy stuff respectively. This is just the system used to group different songs together and should not be taken too literally. The colours serve only to help the flow of each album. Your still encouraged to stick them all in your CD player, hit random, and mix them up a bit.


James was born in Scotland and moved to South Africa with his family when he was four. He returned to Britain in 1987. His first career choice was architecture and it was at college that he joined his first band (originally on bass). He later gave up his studies to concentrate on music. As James's writing style developed he began to have trouble with the restrictions most bands seemed to place upon themselves. " When I write I never have a particular style or sound in mind, I just write a song. That song could be reggae or metal or even a mixture of both but I could never limit myself to just one style".


James formed Carm in 2002 with the intention of starting a band that would have no musical limitations. After some time James still hadn't found the right people to make Carm work the way he had envisaged. He decided to become a reluctant solo artist. "I've always seen Carm as a band, or a number of bands, rather than myself as a solo artist. That's why I decided to keep the name. Some people may only play on one album, or they may become permanent members but everybody makes an important contribution to the whole". Carm went into Arc Studios in October 2002 to begin work on The Turtle Song .