The Audience Award One of the main awards has now been decided by you the audience. The winner will be announced at the Poll Winners concert in March. A huge thanks to all those who contributed. It was wonderful to see such a wide-ranging list of nominations (left) and the way so many of the musicians have touched your lives.
Here are the bands who were voted onto the final shortlist. Click on each name to read more about them and click on the 'listen' icon to hear a selected track from each band. A large selection of your comments can be found by clicking on the list to the left.
Dominic Hall-Smith, Cambridge:
'Blending traditional with electronic modern, this is a refreshing blend that beats the majority of well-meaning western dance/world experimentors hands down. Club friendly bass and grooves, but at last with real songs (and I'm told topical lyrics) rather than a token "world" sample, and a voice with a natural vocoder! Wonderful.'
