The gamut of emotions from Q to Z

The 5th Qwartz Electronic Music Awards ceremony was held in Paris on 3rd April. It was quite a gathering, full of electronica bigwigs. Unfortunately, I couldn't honour my gilt-edged invitation and attend the glittering ceremony in the Cirque d'Hiver because my Learjet was grounded in the Caymans, awaiting a new crunk juice cup. But it wasn't all bad news. Professor Lawrence Lessig, creator of the Creative Commons licence concept, received a well-deserved Qwartz d'Honneur pour l'Innovation for enabling artists to take part in a global sharing culture and know-nothing music blogs to sully it.

All right, sez you, scratching your string vest while pausing momentarily in your search for hamster porn, what's that got to do with the price of fish?

I'll tell you, scruffsters: in October 2007, this greasy corner of the net reviewed and recommended an utterly superb album, Urlaub auf Balkonien by Krill.minima. Lo and behold, after sifting through 430 albums (I know the feeling) the Qwartz jury, with the aid of the public's votes, gave the "Best Album" Qwartz to the very same. Congratulations to both Krill.minima and Thinner netlabel. Other nominees included Autechre (yes, that Autechre), so both artist and label should be very proud of themselves and have an extra slice of cake with their tea.

Over 3 million people have visited the Qwartz website over the last five years - it's exciting to think that many thousands of people have heard/watched the nominees in the various categories and taken the trouble to vote. Roll on the 6th awards!

Such great news deserves another attempt by me to try and get the album cover to appear without mucking up its dimensions/pixel quality:

         

Sigh. So much for opposable thumbs. To make up for my technological shortcomings, here's the opening track. It will have you running baths and lighting candles in no time:

Krill.minima - Somerdellen

Ah, that's better.

I can tell you're itching (literally) to get back to your search for dirty movies involving small fluffy things, so I'll bring this to an end. Find mp3/album links to this superb slice of ambient electronica in my original review, deep in the sepulchral bowels of Catching The Waves. Remember to wash your hands when leaving.

Comments

[Suecae]

Thinner is one of the best net-labels around. No question about it. :)

[CTW]

I agree. Thinner recently decided to concentrate almost exclusively on commercial releases, but it still hosts a huge catalogue of free albums. Let's hope that the label sees the fruit of its hard work.