Quiet night last night, as our apartment was collectively a bit on the tired side. Plenty of time left for partying, particularly since there’s a few days until the delegation bashes get going, so Chinese takeaway, cheap supermarket wine and some DVDs and bad German television seemed like a reasonable enough way to spend the evening.

In the press centre now, anyway, and preparing for “Love In Rewind” with a triple espresso in fast-forward. As always, this page will be updated after each country has rehearsed, and I’m going to try and get along to some of the more potentially interesting press conferences today as well. So stay tuned!

CYPRUS
Roll up, roll up, pay sixpence to see the Cyprus State Circus! Magic boots that allow Christos and the boys to lurch from side to side! A woman practising her hammer-throwing with a giant cotton wool ball on a string! Human windmills! Improbable dance moves! Dramatic facial expressions! Dramatically atonal backing vocals! And, beneath it all, a song that’s growing on me something rotten! But that’s not much use at ESC, is it? And I suspect that’ll be Cyprus’s downfall in the end (well, that and the absence of Greece and the UK in this semi). I wish it well though, I really do.

SWEDEN
A lot of people think Saade is going the same way as Perrelli, Ernman or even Bergendahl. A lot of people will overreact to this first rehersal with OMG HE CANT SING IT IS TEH RUBBISHZZZ!!1!-type posts all over the internet. And guess what? A lot of people are wrong. This is what you do on the first day when your singer has just arrived in the country, has a raspy voice and can basically already sing as well as he needs to for this kind of song – you focus on getting the rest of it right. So, what about the rest? Well, the dancing is as tight as ever, the sound mix is pretty decent considering how produced the studio version is (two backing singers and three dancers, at least two of whom have head mics – maybe all three), and the visual impact on stage is absolutely huge. Place all this in the context of an inconsistent-to-weak first half of the semi-final, and to say Sweden are sailing through to the final would be an insult to the maritime.

MOLDOVA
OK. Putting my disappointment at the mundane nature of the song to one side, the Moldovans will be happy enough with this first rehearsal. They tried a few things out, most notably involving a mini-screen behind the band, which seems like a good idea to me – they removed it later on, though, so we’ll see what they go with in the end. The ridiculous headgear is still there, and so is the perplexing fairy on a unicycle, but then surrealism seems to go with the territory. Solid stuff on the whole, and not something I’d be at all surprised to see in the final, though I suspect qualification would result in a few furrowed brows among the less rock-friendly fanboys.

UKRAINE
Hahaha, I knew it was worth betting on this one to come top 10 when the odds were spectacularly generous. You can always count on Ukraine to come up with the goods, and they’ve harnessed the skills of Ukraine’s Got Talent winner Kseniya Simonova to do her sand art magic, which is then projected onto the big screen at the back of the stage. Seriously. The risk, of course, is that the whole extravaganza overshadows the song – and the song isn’t the most substantial in the world, for all I think the chorus is very strong in its own right. They’re working hard on the camerawork to get the balance right, though, and I have no reason to think they won’t do just that. Guaranteed qualifier after such a slow start to the semi, surely.

SLOVAKIA
They’re going for “warm and classy” rather than “cheap and slutty” with the performance, which is probably the right way to approach it. This will live and die on its vocals, basically, as the staging is perfectly pleasant. At the minute, though, the vocal mix is rather weak – not outright bad, just weak. And there’s an ill-advised Corinna May long note at the end (the song’s over, love). Oh well…

BELGIUM
It’s “O Julissi” with a beatboxer, basically – at least in terms of how it comes across on stage and the chance it has of doing anything in the voting. For a well-rehearsed band who are clearly talented at what they do, they’re sadly lacking in charisma and they don’t really seem particularly “together”. Maybe it’s the staging, maybe it’s the horrible jacket the older guy is wearing, maybe they’re just Belgian. Ultimately, whatever its merits, this just isn’t working in a hi-tech stage/stadium context. The sound of the Greek woman yattering away on the other side of the café area improves this, anyway – she’s having a “quiet” conversation with the people on her table, which means we’re all enjoying it.

While we’re waiting for Belgium (and there’s a phrase you don’t hear often), here’s a snap of the press conference area as Dino Merlin did his stuff. Pretty well-attended for this time of the day.

NETHERLANDS
Well, they haven’t Dutched it up too much, although there is the obligatory multi-culti backing group doing some smiley swaying. Otherwise it’s much as you’d expect – they’re an MOR rock band, they stand there and play it, and you’ll either like it or find it a bit dull. Camerawork is pleasant, lighting is yellow-tinged and suitably different to Bosnia and Austria, so that’s all good. And that’s about all there is to report really!

AUSTRIA
Aww, poor Nadine had to put on a jacket halfway through because it’s too cold in the arena for her black evening dress number. It’s the second song in a row with an a cappella intro, albeit a rather lengthier one in this case. Her vocals are perfectly decent for this time of the morning (and this time of the fortnight), and the visuals are reasonably effective – she stands on a flat gemstone-shaped podium in the middle of the main stage, flanked by a Jessica Garlick-style belty backing group, while the LED screens do pretty things in black and purple with white lights. The last section sees a cascade of diamonds on a blue background, which works well. Is it a qualifier? Well, it’s got a stinker of a draw, and the whole thing does come across a bit too “Idol show winner” for its own good. They’re still tinkering with the camerawork, though – it’s been different every time so far – and there’s definite potential here.

BOSNIA & HERZEGOVINA
It’s refreshing to start the morning with a performance by an old pro. He’ll have been up since 6am, but there’s no sign of that here – a fresh and welcoming performance, much as we saw in the Bosnian presentation. (I do still get a Jahn Teigen “Do Re Mi” vibe from the first 30 seconds, mind you.) There’s lots of sweeping camera movement, leading to the risk that Dino will wander out of shot occasionally, but otherwise it’s visually warm and friendly. From what I can hear from the screens here, I think they’ve taken the (minimal) backing track accompaniment off the opening call-and-response section, so the music only kicks in with the word “hundred” – presumably making it easier to get the timing right, which seems entirely sensible to me. There’s an odd finishing shot with them all pointing into the distance, but I suppose it wouldn’t be a Bosnian entry without something weird and “arty”. In conclusion, then, this is much as I saw it before: a definite top tenner, with potential for a whole lot more if it happens to catch the right vibe. Oh, and they’ve got the right Bosnian flag now. Well done ARD. 😉