a-ha receiving platinum awards in Munich, January 15th

While in Munich to perform at the Bavarian Movie Awards on January 15th, a-ha were presented with platinum awards for selling more than 200 000 copies of Foot Of The Mountain in Germany, trade publication MusikWoche reports.

Considering the fact that “no one” buys CDs anymore, this is an impressive number. The album is still in the Top 100 German album chart after 31 weeks, currently at number 65.

More news from Germany: a-ha have been nominated in the “Best international group”-category for this year’s Echo Awards, which will take place in Berlin on March 4th.

The other nominees are U2, Depeche Mode, Black Eyed Peas and Razorlight. a-ha will not be able to attend the award show, as they are opening their farewell tour in Buenos Aires on that day.

In Norway the nominations for this year’s Spellemann Awards were announced yesterday, but a-ha did not get any nominations for their final album.

Producer and Apparatjik member Martin Terefe has posted a news update on his official website which says that the long-awaited Apparatjik album will be released on the same day as the band’s debut concert in Berlin next Monday, February 1st.

Since there has been no info about a CD release, it’s fair to assume that the album will be available only as a digital download.

Some info about last week’s Pupparatjik workshop in Trondheim can now be found here. One of the students who participated has shared some of his thoughts on the Apparatchick forum and he has also posted a set of pictures on Flickr.

And of course you can see the results of the workshop at apparatjik.com/pupparatjik.