ROYCE was founded by Simon Stockhausen and Christian Weidner in 2004 and released their first album in Octobre 2006. Their music incorporates a wide varieties of styles and influences reaching from very abstract stuff to gentle and soothing sounds. It also contains elements from Jazz, Fusion and Groove music.
It all started when Simon and Christian got to know each other in 2001 playing together in a workshop-band in Berlin. In the time following they worked together in the studio, experimenting around with Comprovisation-principles and Christian appeared in some of Simon´s projects and film-soundtracks. They were then joined by drummer Danny Schroeteler and guitarist Kalle Kalima and after some improvised studio-jams together the idea was born, to found a band together. In 2004 Christian and Simon won a prize with their studio-demos sponsored by the Berlin senate which enabled them to start the recordings for their first Album.
In a pretty wild and crazy studio session in Novembre 2004 lasting for ten days about 4 hours of music were recorded by the german sound-genius Walter Quintus in a very special "haunted house" in the middle of the woods in western Germany. In January 2005 additional recordings and overdubs were made and Simon flew in Dane Alderson from Perth/Australia to dub his great bass-playing on a lot of the tracks.
It then took Walter and Simon three mixing sessions to "distill" about 80 minutes of music from the vast amount of material. It all got a bit expensive too and Simon decided to take a break from this project.
In Octobre 2006 the last tracks were mixed to finally accomplish the album THE FIRST which contains 14 tracks (103 minutes) on a double CD.
This band has never played live as ROYCE but soon they will. Christian and Simon will also enhance their collaboration as a Duo in the near future.
The name ROYCE was adapted from Walter´s little son Royce who was sometimes in the studio during the first session.

Reviews:

"Founded by Simon Stockhausen and Christian Weidner, Royce is taking off with a double CD that draws together many influences, from classical music, cerebral intricated avant gardistic explorations to electro jazz deep soundscapes, evocative of Terje Rypdal and Nils Petter Molvar sonorities. On some pieces you can even hear pinkfloydian echoes from an unknown "Dark Side Of the Moon". The fine tuned polyphony of electronic and acoustic elements projects a sound sculpture crafted with depth and detail, yet leaving enough space for individual artistic expression."- Comment on www.jazzworldquest.com