SuRie's up next for the United Kingdom. No notable changes here. It sounds good in the hall, but from what I can see on the screens here some of the wide shots are very dark with just a bright square in the middle, so that's something to work on.

Portugal 2nd rehearsal. Claudia and Isaura in fine morning voice. A few more wider angles this time. Still not in costume. #Eurovision

— ESCKAZ Chris (@EsckazChris) May 6, 2018

Israeli Party 2018

The one party to attend every year is the Israeli Party, held at the Cineteatro Capitólio, in downtown Lisbon, the queue started at around 8pm, even though the doors would not open for another 2 hours.

Always a pleasure to attend this event and we thank the Israeli Delegation for the invites again this year. The huge crowd started to enter the building from 10pm and even though there were lots of people it moved really quickly and were able to enjoy the party sharing some drinks and food and most importantly meeting all the friends.

We met Philipp Kirkorov in the queue, with the Moldovan delegation, along with other delegations such as Albania, Iceland, Finland, Macedonia, Ireland, Denmark, Poland and many many others. We even spotted last year's Georgian entrant Tamara Gachechiladze among the guests.

Thanks to Tali Eshkoli, Shai Barak and the whole Israeli team for the invitations and it is always a pleasure for us to be there.

All videos from the performances are here;

The last day of rehearsals - before the dress rehearsals - has started with Portugal. Cláudia Pascoal and Isaura are on stage. They're still not giving away what their stage outfits will be in less than a week from today. In the hall the performance is very atmospheric with all the spotlights and lanterns and Cláudia sings well.

Another day - another event to learn more about Portugal and it's brilliant music stage. We went psychedelic again, even space-rock rather with the band Saturnia who were doing a presentation of their new album The Seance Tapes in Musicbox venue in Lisbon. A trip through the 6 previous albums, revisited by its creator, the renowned musician and producer Luís Simões. According to the press-release, with rare live appearances, and a creative process always enveloped in secrecy, this Saturnia concert was one of the must-sees of 2018 - and it definitely didn't disappoint.

The concert surprisingly got going practically on time (22.30) allowing to get back on the night bust at 00.30.

Trance music of Saturnia is dominated by the layers of organ, synthesizer, guitar and sitar that bring sometimes calm, sometimes eruptive environments, hypnotic effects with the soft voice of Luís Simões adding to the athmosphere. After experimenting with electronic influences, band is now back to the late 60's / early 70's space-rock-psychedelic, proto-progressive; with some similarities to Pulsar, Can, King Crimson, Tangerine Dream and sometimes even touches of Ravi Shankar.

Band had complete discography on sale, and I've got the new album for 13 Euros. For others I again went digital.

It was a shorter day at rehearsals and the only substantial move in the market was on Australia, that drifted further.
The betting markets are confident in ruling out an Australian win now and it drifted on all other markets as well like the Top10 and even qualification doesnt seem to be as safe as previously assumed, which might be a temporary overreaction.
The winner of the day in the market is Moldova which continues to get great reception at the press centre.