Album As Art Awards: The first-annual!! [Album As Art #54]

This is the first-annual Album As Art Awards, care of The Gumshoe Grove. The award, as you will see if you peruse the photo gallery above, is a stained-glass teardrop designed by my wife and I. We will attempt to mail them out, but if you read this and you won please send us your address!

AND THE WINNER IS!!!:

• Best Overall Presentation (for a single release): Summer Amp – “Torch of the Mistakes” 7-inch – Folkwaste Library (100 individually unique hand-made collage copies)
• Best Colored/marbled vinyl: Happy Jawbone Family Band – Hotel Double Tragedy LP – Feeding Tube (gold vinyl, excellent cover image)
• Best Etching: Devendra Banhart – “Baby Boy” 7-inch (b-side etching)
• Best Pic Disc: White Orange – “And This is Why I Speak to You in Parables” 12-inch – Made in China Records (limited to 500, miraculous)
• Best Sleeve: Avey Tare – Down There - Car Park (alligator cut-outs, baby)
• Best Cassette-Tape Presentation: Hoor-Paar-Kraat – “Handy Feet” CS + hand-painted 7-inch in box – Pesant Magick (edition of 15, special edition)
• Best Combo Package: Liars – Sisterworld 2XLP w/ speakeasy + DVD – Mute (check out the pics, you gotta see this thing in action)
• Best Box Set: Various artists – “Burlington, Vermont” 8-tape box – NNA Tapes
• Best 3-inch CD: Skitter Seven – “Demon +” – La Station Radar
• Best 7-inch Presentation: Sonny & The Sunsets – “The Hypnotist ” 7-inch + booklet – Future Stress
• Best CD-R Presentation: The Red River – Little Songs About the Big Picture – Brave Records
• Best Album Artwork: Prudence Teacup – Where All the Little Songs Go When They Die LP + booklet – All Hands Electric Records
• Overall Label Aesthetic 2010: Sanity Muffin
• Most Elaborate Packaging Award: Sundancer – “Music and Language of Wolves” cassette tape – Plustapes (Special edition of 24 house inside a taxidermied wolf head. All hand painted unique, pro-dubbed.)