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A wonderful location: The "dome in the hill", a cave deeply buried in the so-called "Schlossberg" in Graz, with an area of about 25 square yards and a height of nearly 15 yards, which you can only reach with a walk through a 50 yard long tunnel. The acoustics must be great in such a place and it's surely a lot of fun singing there. However, for a group like us who prefer to sing without microphones, the conditions turned out to be far from ideal, as the walls were covered with styrofoam, ruining the natural acoustics. Bad conditions for a natural sound but on the other hand, excellent conditions for creating voice-pop at its best. And there was a lot of voice-pop going on between July 23 and 26, during the 9th "vokal.total" Festival 2007 staged by "Steirischer Sängerbund".

Overall 19 groups from 7 countries competed, performing rock/pop, jazz/swing, hip hop and many other styles to the audience, but all without instrumentation, completely a cappella. Most groups worked with (in parts) very impressive mouth percussion, octave-down effects and other artificial finesses that created sounds, grooves and an atmosphere just like at any rock/pop/Hip Hop/etc concert.

In these surroundings we get out of line, of course. We were the only ensemble that decided to refuse any electrical amplification – like we usually do. However, we soon recognised that this approach was impossible because of the "dead" acoustics in the "dome in the hill". Furthermore, as refreshments continued to be served during the performances, just like at rock concerts, there were no silent moments at all. Therefore our group sound ended up being slightly amplified by room microphones, which is generally a good technique. Nevertheless, compared to the other groups that all used hand mics we sounded a little mono.

Nevertheless, we had a lot of fun and had several reasons to be happy: firstly, we met a lot of likeable and amazing a cappella groups, and the self-motivated organisers, the "Steirischer Sängerbund" (special thanks to Su!), but above all we really were thrilled by an euphoric audience that enjoyed our very different style of singing and performing and that finally rewarded us with the audience prize for the best group.

The jury – consisting of Ward Swingle, founder of The Swingle Singers, Anders Jalkéus, bass of The Real Group and the vocal expert Matthias Becker – awarded us 2nd prize in the comedy category, which both delighted but also surprised us greatly, as we obviously didn't really fit into the concept of this festival.
Okay, that probably wasn't what we were aiming to achieve anyway. But just as Anders Jalkéus said after the proclamation of the jury´s decision: "You have the best natural voice blending, best acoustic sound I've ever heard. But here in Graz you can never win if you don't use mics." What a bummer! But accepted! (This is, in fact, a compliment… ;-) )

Anyway, we also share the happiness of maybebop, our friends from Hannover, who stormed the festival, winning 1st prize in both the "jazz" and "comedy" categories and 2nd prize in the "pop" category. Congratulations! In conjunction with our success at the TAMPEREEN SÄVEL in Finland a few weeks ago, you can say – and rightly so – that Hannover is the European capital of a cappella singing par excellence. :-)