Gratitude Juices.

Final gigs of 2025 are now part of emotional and digital memory. We bade farewell to Kalo as a member of our on-stage ensemble, but we keep him as an honorary member emeritus of The House of ALI. It was done in style, to the best of our abilities. Although we promised Kalo we wouldn't make a big deal out of it in front of the crowd, it was hard not to. We'll apologize this evening at your birthday bash, Kalo... 

The pre-gig fever heated up as a race to get people to hear about the gig in the first place. Numbers say we got a crowd of around 150 peeps in Sofia and 50 or so in Plovdiv. And we're grateful for every single one that had made it. The big struggle at both venues was hanging that crumbled black backdrop... Our takeaway: every wall is different and bitchy, pins and sticky tape aren't always enough, but Orli can keep a bit even with a big heavy paper on his head.

The atmosphere was heartwarming. Crowd sang and danced along creating that infinite mirror that you hope for. One that makes you relive the emotions you put into the song, with a twist. Then you feed that into your playing and the audience sends it back again. We played for 90min straight, felt like we could have gone a bit longer. But we didn't, which is the right thing to do. It feels like an accomplishment to have enough songs to choose from and create a strong setlist - and more are coming. A problem you want to have.

The post-gig fever in Sofia was all about a not so pleasant surprise that there was going to be a "student DJ party" thereafter and we had to clear the stage in twenty minutes or so. What we prefer is mingling with the crowd, saying thank you to our guests and friends, enjoying the positive body chemistry of the moment, as you don't get that every day... But thankfully most people were patient enough to wait around. LVA was a great warm-up act, quite different from us, but that's how we like it. Really loved her tracks and visualizations. You can always tell when someone puts an extra effort into improving their act, which is what counts. We had only nice words for each other and all of them sincere, it matters a lot to have a positive presence like her and her boyfriend to greet you backstage.

Oоh, and we had our first on-stage improvisation by order of mother nature herself. Ali broke into "Bittersweet Symphony" for an unplanned, but necessary detour. I don't think any of us flinched, which is encouraging. But having the cover band background, we could take a few dozen detours without breaking too much sweat.

Now we regroup and not skip a beat. So much work to take on, so many expectations to align, and only so much time to divide between them. We got things to look forward to, keep it interesting for ourselves and, hopefully, the music will come from it. INTROVERSE is now a closed book we'll bask in whenever re-reading. Now it's off to the final, non-finite journey of being tested by the judge ultimate: time.