A trio of up and coming electronic dance musicians from Montreal have been crowned the top synthesizer composers in Canada.

FM Radio Gods, Montreal dance scene heavyweights, were judged the winners of the Roland Synthesizer Contest at the competition Finals held in Montreal last week. There sound blends minimal house, glitchy electro, trance and techno. Their video for Elektro Kills is embedded above. 

The group’s composition, See You Later Oscillator, was played for a crowd at the Society for Arts and Technology. The slow dance track repeatedly built and released tension in glitch- and percussion-laden patches that had the crowd bopping and swaying. 

The Roland Synthesizer Contest invited composers to submit original music tracks created on keyboard, software or other synthesizers to Roland Canada between July 1 and October 15, 2008. The top six tracks were chosen, published on a MySpace site and put to a public vote to choose the top three entries. The three chosen entrants, FM Radio Gods, Alessio Mazzone, and Francis Hooper hailed from Montreal, QC, Maple, ON and Burnaby, BC respectively.

The finalists’ tracks were played at the Roland Synthesizer Contest Finals on November 13, 2008 at the Society for Arts and Technology (SAT) building in Montreal in front of a live audience and judging panel composed of:

• Amin Bhatia, winner of the Roland International Synthesizer Competition in 1981 and 1982;
• Jason Amm AKA Solvent, a Toronto-based electronic musician;
• Jeremy Greenspan, one half of the Hamilton-based hit duo Junior Boys; and
• Paul McCabe, vice-president of Roland Canada.

FM Radio Gods took the glory of first-place and walked away with the grand prize: a Roland V-Synth GT synthesizer valued at $3,895.00. Second-place went to Francis Hooper, who took home a Roland SH-201 and Roland SONIC Cell, and third-place went to Alessio Mazzone, who won an EDIROL PCR-500 and Cakewalk Pro Suite.