Radio ElectronautsRadio Electronauts

The awards came first. Sergi Gvarjaladze, a musician who had run a short-lived label called Komuna putting out electronic compilations, started an annual prize for Georgian electronic music in 2007 — nine categories, honouring the previous year's work — on the theory that the scene needed something to compete for. The Electronauts Foundation grew around it with backing from Tbilisi City Hall, and the radio followed as the part that runs all year rather than for one night a year.

The rotation is the scene itself: well over a hundred artists can pass in an afternoon without much repetition, from Tbilisi veterans of the 2000s to producers barely past their first release, the same scene the awards were built to reward. Ambient and IDM lead, leftfield techno and dub behind them, and roughly one title in ten arrives in Georgian script rather than Latin.