On June 28, 2012, the audience gathered in the Museon park in Moscow became aware of the winners of the Steppe Wolf prize, which will be awarded for the fifth time this year. The experts who determined the winners in sixteen nominations considered the DDT, Bird Em, Ifwe, the Internet project "Re: Aquarium" and the China-Town-Cafe club worthy of the awards.
The Steppe Wolf Wolf Prize, named in honor of Hermann Hesse’s novel, has been awarded for musical achievements since 2008. The nominees for this award are selected by a panel of journalists and critics, and the winners are determined by a survey of experts. According to one of the founders of Steppe Wolf, critic A. Troitsky, this is the only music award that is given for talent.
In the "Debut" nomination, the sympathies of experts were on the side of the Petersburg team Ifwe, playing in the genre of india-pop. The group, established in 2011, recorded the debut album, “All My Joy, ” released by independent Russian label Snegiri in the summer of 2012.
The figurine of a wolf went to the group "Red Banner Division Named After My Grandmother", whose track "Astronauts" from the mini-album "Oboe" won the nomination "Song". The Moscow India Orchestra of 13 people walked around the recordings of other nominees, among which were the songs of the group Aquarium and DDT. However, these teams also did not remain without awards.
The album “Otherwise”, released by the DDT group in the fall of 2011, became the winner in the “Album” nomination. A number of critics compared the concept of the first of two parts of the album with ideas typical of Pink Floyd's The Wall. The second part of “Otherwise” is a collection of songs recorded in different years. The group’s Moscow show was deemed worthy of victory in the Concert nomination.
The winner in the Voice category was the vocalist of the St. Petersburg group Chikiss, Galya Chikis, for whom critics recognize amazing romanticism and the ability to work in different genres. The prize in the nomination "Text" went to the project in the style of rap "Bird Eat", created by members of the Yekaterinburg group "4 Positions of Bruno" Nikolai Babak and Alexander Sitnikov. The winner in the Music category was guitarist Pavel Dodonov, working with Andrei Lysikov, better known as Dolphin.
The disc of Disappointment of the Year, the second album released by the Moscow group NRKTK, was recognized by experts as worthy of victory in the Design category. In the nomination "Video", the clip for the director Andrei Ayrapetov made for the song I Awoke by Scofferlane was recognized as the best. The video was shot in the China-Town-Cafe club, which became the winner of the award in the nomination "Institution". The winner in the "Film" category was Sergey Lobanov's musical comedy "Big Top Show", awarded in 2011 by a special jury prize of the Moscow International Film Festival.
In 2012, the "Steppe Wolf" got the nomination "Musical Resource". Thankyou.ru portal was declared the winner in this category. This resource with a literary and music section works on a pay-as-you-go scheme. This principle of content distribution differs from the traditional one, in which shops and record companies act as intermediaries between the listener and the author.
In the "Media" category, the "Afisha" magazine won the sympathy of experts, and in the "Internet" category, the joint project Lenta.ru and Kroogi.com "Re: Aquarium" dedicated to the group's anniversary turned out to be worthy of the "Steppe Wolf".
The winner in the Catalyst nomination was the leader of the Center group created in the late 70s in Moscow Vasily Shumov, known as a poet, musician and creator of projects in the field of photo and video art.
In the category with the mysterious name “Something”, the project was awarded to Vasya Oblomov, Leonid Parfyonov and Ksenia Sobchak. The premiere of the first rap-style video recorded by the participants of this project took place on the air of the Dozhd channel in early 2012. The song on behalf of the Russian people, published on the YouTube service, gained more than a million views in the first days.
