The Athenians, Interstellar Overdrive, were formed in 1998 and succeeded in winning first prize in the 1999 “Battle of the Bands”, which later resulted in their debut album in 2000. Their line up on this release, which was titled with the band’s name, was: Orestis Karamanlis – vocals, guitars, Dr. Aris – bass, Artemis Bogri – vocals, Aris Oikonomou – guitar, Grigotis Kokkinos – drums, Dimos Bourandas – violin. Dimitris Ioannou, of the band Bocomolech, appeared in the song “In the Cyrcle”.
“Interstellar Overdrive”, which was produced by George Priniotakis, carried the essence of the darkest sounds of the 80’s, along with a flavor of the decade that followed. With one foot on melancholic gothic rock (Bogri’s voice reminds me of All About Eve’s Julian Reagan sometimes) and the other foot on the late 90’s, the album spun off spreading a very interesting light in the listener’s room.
The tracklist:
1. In the Cyrcle
2. Nine Eyes
3. Its golden light
4. Flattered
5. Shade
6. And I weep
7. Derelict
8. I won’t follow
9. Hide your love
After several line-up changes, two years later they released their second album, titled “Surface b” which dealt mostly with indie and post rock soundscapes. Orestis Karamanlis, Dr. Aris and a new drummer, Alex Sakelariou, built a dreamy, melancholic atmosphere. Pepy Kosma took over the vocals (Artemis Bogri appeared as a guest), and again many guests made an appearance here: Dimitris Ioannou on the track “Every Day”, Manolis Angelakis (from the band Illegal Operation) on “When Time’s Passed”, Akis Bogiatzis on “Pulse”, and Noam Chomsky’s voice was used with his permission.
1. The tracklist:
2. Istrumental idea #1
3. Pulse
4. Every Day
5. & time melting me
6. Music for the trees
7. Music for a motion picture
8. Breeze
9. Monster
10.The feast
11.Pulse #2 (tube remix)
A number of compilation participations followed and the band also started writing music for the exhibitions of several painters. Last I heard, they were about to release a third album titled “Hibernation” during 2008, but, unfortunately, I have no information about this release…
tribe4mian's weblog 
tapes gone loose
October 4, 2009 at 10:02 am
Hi again after a long time :)! In my view, Interstellar Overdrive are a unique band in the greek landscape: were they around in the early-to-mid ’90s, when the scene was blooming, they would have fit in perfectly & enriched it, too. What’s particularly impressive is that they put out one good record (the first one) & one exceptional record (the second one) at a time that essentially nothing was going on. (I invite everyone to count the noteworthy bands with english verse in the first half of the ’00s.) That that was a period of transition for the scene is rather clear, I further believe, from the bands that emerged in this second half of the decade: more quirky, clearly listening to pitchfork media-type music themselves, more modern in a sense. For this, I applaud Interstellar Overdrive.
As for Hibernation, it’s out & you can get it either online or through Orestis or, if you find yourself in Thessaloniki, in Lotos (which also has an online store). I got it in August but still have not listened to it carefully. But I wouldn’t miss it for the world…
P.S.: They also put out ‘Noise And Usefull Objects’ in ’05, which accompanied an art exhibit of Stefanos Rokos – no spare copies any more, unfortunately & I also only have it in mp3 format… Rokos did the artwork for Hibernation, by the way.