James Violet is the pen name of the artist Max Kuno Höfler.
Born 1963 in Cologne, Germany, He picked up the guitar when he was 12, playing songs of The Beatles, Bowie, Cohen and the Stooges.

The first song he composed was called „Freedom“, that was 1976.

After a short interlude as a guitar player and singer in a Beatles cover band at grammar school he focused on writing poetry and short stories.

After  exams he spent 15 months in the army, writing a lot of poetry – all lost – studying male behaviour under warlike conditions in times of peace.

Three years on building lots followed, then he entered the school of arts in Cologne. Painting was the essential for a while, but he was still working on stage as well: action painting, speaking, singing, shouting, playing the buzz saw, megaphone and the electric guitar: “Call it performance art or trying to find a combination of the stuff I was – and still I am - deeply interested in: words, pictures, sounds and melodies.“

„Many musicians I was working with in those years are still my very best friends and musical companions up to now.  I´m so happy, that they all play on this album.“

This album,The Songs Of James Violet, brings out the melodic aspect of the music without brushing aside the heavy sounds of sinking ships and layers of distorted instruments crying in the desert sun.

James Violet lives with his family in Cologne.