Biography


Odyssice (a fantasy name associated with Greek mythology) was founded in 1986 by Bastiaan Peeters (guitar). The group had an enormous start when 'Track One' was played on the dutch radio-show Countdown Café in 1987. That night the phone didn’t stopped ringing. Kees Baars, host of 'Countdown Café', said he had never seen such a reaction. The music of Odyssice is quite unique and can be described as dark clouds of string-ensembles, melodic basslines, creative drums and beautiful long guitar-solos. The guitar-solos add a vocal quality to this impressive instrumental music. All these ingredients make the music colourful and illustrative.

In the beginning
In 1989 'Losing Her' was the new track on the 'Exposure'-LP from the magazine 'Sym-Info', and according to 'Sym-Info's' office 'Losing Her' was one of the best songs on the album. The huge interest lad to an invitation to perform at a 'Sym-Info's' festival at ’t Noorderligt (now called 013) in Tilburg on June 16th 1989. The Noorderligt performance was a huge success. Requests for the live recordings of that show were enormous and it was sold out in no time.

The band was musically successful but musical differences caused them to disappear from spotlight for some time. Decided was to reincarnate Odyssice with new members. After a long period of try-outs, including singers. The band completed itself with the addition of keyboard-player Jeroen van der Wiel.

The debut
In 1997 the debut CD was released. The mini-album 'Moondrive' was well received by both the prog-critics and prog-fans world-wide. The release was followed by a series of performances kicking off at the very first ProgFarm in Bakkeveen-NL. At this time Menno Boomsma joined the band on drums and had his debut on the Tivoli-stage in Utrecht.

The Follow-up
After two fruitful years and a sold out album Odyssice decided to take it slow in 1999. They worked on new material for the follow up to 'Moondrive'. The new songs were finished at the end of that same year and in January 2000 the recording of 'Impression' took place.

Shortly after the contracts were signed with the English record-company Cyclops, the new Odyssice album 'Impression' was released world-wide on November 1st. Once again the album has been well received by both prog-critics and prog-fans.

Dark ages
Due to personal problems at the end of 2001 everything around the band became very quiet. Resulting that mid 2002 Menno, Bastiaan and Jeroen were without bass-player.

The album 'Moondrive' was well regarded by fans and there were a lot of requests for a re-release. Odyssice agreed with Cyclops records to do just that and the new re-issue contained a multimedia part with live video's and several other goodies, released June 2003.

Finding a suitable new bass-player turned out to be a more challenging task than first expected. Resulting finally at the end of 2004 the arrival of bass-player Peter Kosterman.

Resurrection
After a slow start in 2005 when the band moved their rehearsal room to a new location, which had to be completely re-decorated, the band was fully in action writing new material for a new album.

In 2006 Odyssice staged live in the Amsterdam TV studio of RTV-Noord- Holland, fully equiped. Backed up by a fabulous lightshow by Michael Moorthaemer, and large projection screen in the back of the stage displaying mood films and logo projection. The idea and producer of this project is Arjan van Leeuwen, who is a long time friend of the band. That same night Odyssice performed one and half hour set in front of a small selected group of friends and family, recorded live and non-stop by the RTV-NoordHolland for later broadcast.

The year 2007 and 2008 were mainly used for creating more new songs and for Bastiaan to realize his long-time dream; a private digital home-recording studio, which will have it's official premiere with the recording of the new Odyssice album.

The recording of the new album began in Februari 2009. Seven new songs, that were selected from the demo’s, were recorded in the new ‘Legend Studios’. The new album ‘Silence’ is expected to be released Spring 2010. The release will be backed-up by completely re-designed website, trailers on YouTube, Facebook/Hyves/MySpace websites, media interviews and live-performances through Europe.




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