This was the first time in the history of the Emergenza Acoustic Festival to be held in Budapest. There was a very nice atmosphere in the Avalon Club, which opened in the beginning of November.

The first act of the chilli afternoon was Urbán Mátyás. He has a unique style, playing with a down tuned guitar and only instrumental. He has Hungarian folk elements in his songs and sometimes they remember also a bit to the oriental styled music. Urbán Mátyás was the winner of that day, so he’s the lucky guy, who goes to the European Final in Rome in February 2008.

After this came a wonderful lady on stage, Singh Viktoria, who has a very nice voice, but sometimes a bit too loud. But when she started her last song which was a cover, ‘Somewhere over the Rainbow’, everybody in the concert hall was astounded.

It was time for the Latin pop group, CaracasUnderpop, to get on stage. Just the two singers Agi and Pablo could take part, cause at these acoustic show at maximum two people are allowed. These two are so good together on stage. Agi has a nice voice and when Pablo starts to sing in his mother tongue, it’s just nice. They could win the most audience votes and with this the Takamine guitar.

Zöldkapu was the next duo. A young duo from Eger. Nice arrangements, but the voice of the singer is not this educated yet.

With his Spanish lyrics and Latin music, Gábos Barna caught the audience. His top of the show was when he played his last song with just a flute.

One of the top performers of this afternoon was Michael Kentish. His soft voice caught the attention of each guest. Of course his English lyrics are very good as a native speaker, they fit beautiful together with the chords he was playing. Typical British stuff!

While the jury discussed who will be the winner, Deadly Tide from Italy was rocking unplugged the stage with covers from Kiss, AC/DC and also Bryan Adams, but their own songs rocked, too. With their crazy attitude together with their rocky outfit combined with songs like ’King Of The World’ or ’Sexy Disco Sexy’ they step into the boots of their idols. A simply freak show!

Sebastian Haase