Christof Ellinghaus, the man behind the independent record label City Slang, will be awarded the Primavera Award during the next edition of the Primavera Sound festival in Barcelona. This prize, which will be awarded annually, is being given for the first time this year in recognition of his professional career as well as his exceptional contribution to the development and enrichment of the musical community.

The Flaming Lips, The Lemonheads, Yo La Tengo, Built To Spill, Tindersticks, Broken Social Scene, Calexico, Tortoise, Hole, Caribou and Arcade Fire are only a few of the bands that we can associate with Christof and City Slang. Thanks to his work and his label, some of the most outstanding records of recent decades have been released in Europe and it has been possible to see these essential bands from the American panorama live. Part of his success has been to allow the bands to make the final decisions about their work, as many of them are renown for steering clear of the mass-media game and from mainstream norms.

Christof's career in the music industry started at the end of the 80s as a booking agent in Sweatshop Booking Agency, managing tours of several American bands, some as big as Nirvana in 1989, around Germany and Europe. The thing that motivated him to start his own label was receiving a cassette from The Flaming Lips accompanied by a note asking him to help them find a real European label. It was then that Christof decided to create City Slang exclusively to launch the album "In A Priest Driven Ambulance (With Silver Sunshine Stares)" and to organise its presentation tour. In less than a year he had signed bands of the calibre of Yo La Tengo, Das Damen and The Lemonheads and in 1991 another opportunity came his way: the European launch of the album "Pretty on the Inside" by Hole, whose first singles were extremely well received.

In 1994 he founded Bungalow Records with Marcus Liesenfeld and Holger Beier, from Le Hammond Inferno, who used to DJ at Nitsa Club, which is emblematic on the Barcelona electronic music scene. As a result of that relationship, several bands on City Slang played at the club that led to further collaborations between Christof and Primavera Sound and thanks to which Barcelona got to see some of those bands live.