MySpace

Last time we checked in with topless DJ Portia Surreal, the self-billed “Erotic Fetish DJ Extraordinaire” was an “up and coming” topless DJ, described at her site as a “glowing disco ball vixen”.

Here’s a little background on this glowing disco ball vixen:

Portia Surreal’s sexy showcase of artistic musical expression has teased and allured the world with controversy. Often being the first female DJ to perform in global venues, it has been her delicious pleasure to reinvent the ordinary conception of the traditional electronic DJ.

Due to the sexual nature of Portia Surreal’s shows, certain countries have required government approval prior to specific performances.

The shine may have worn off Surreal’s disco balls, though, because her website has been wiped off the face of the Internet.

Warning: It only gets more NSFW from here.

Pages: 1 2 3

Bakis Sirros, above in his studio, is a synthesis and composer and DIN recording artist, as Parallel Worlds. 

Sirros’ work is in the tradition of classic synth music artists like Klaus Schulze, Robert Rich, Steve Roach and Tangerine Dream. 

He talked about his love of modular synthesizers, especially Eurorack modules, in a recent interview with Analogue Haven: Read more…

From languid sonic landscapes to energetic dance tracks, the many entries received by Roland Canada for the first successful run of the Roland Synthesizer Contest have been trimmed to six by an expert panel of judges and now the public can weigh in with their opinion.

Uploaded to the Roland Synthesizer Contest MySpace site, the top six tracks will be open to public vote for two weeks from Tuesday, October 21 to Friday, October 31.

The poll ratings, combined with the judges’ previous scores, will determine the top three finalists who will compete at the Roland Synthesizer Contest Finals event in Montreal on November 13, 2008.

The top six semi-finalists were chosen by an esteemed group of judges that included:

• Lawrence Gowan: celebrated Canadian musician and lead singer and keyboardist for the rock band STYX.
• Anthony Cooperwood: Montreal keyboardist with acts such as Cirque du Soleil and Freddie James.
• Tony Padalino: Toronto keyboardist with CTV’s Canadian Idol.

The Roland Synthesizer Contest was last run as an international competition by Roland Corporation in Japan over 20 years ago and was staged this year as a national, Canadian, contest for the first time. The rules were very simple: entrants were invited to submit an original synthesizer composition created on a keyboard or computer synthesizer of any make until October 15. The submissions were then critiqued by a panel of judges and streamlined to six entries to be voted on by the public.

WordPress is a great blogging platform and is popular with musicians for building music websites.

Out of the box, it does 90% of the stuff you’ll need to build a music site. Here are some free add-ons, though, that can handle the rest.

Five Free WordPress Plugins For Musicians

• Gigs Calendar – This plugin is geared toward bands and musicians to manage and display a calendar of their gigs within WordPress. It’s meant to be as easy as possible for both the musician and the fan. It even manages venue data complete with mapping and ticket links.
• Discography – Musicians need a way to easily organize information about their music. This plugin exists to do just that. It lets you publish a list of albums and auto-generates a WordPress page for each song, so that fans can comment, save links to your songs and share them with friends.
• Audio Player – Audio Player provides you with a simple way of inserting a stylish Flash mp3 player on your WordPress posts and pages.
• PodPress – if you want to release MP3s and have them not only downloadable from your site, but also as a podcast, PodPress can make it easy to manage within WordPress.
• MySpace Crossposter – a WordPress plugin that cross-publishes all of your WordPress blog entries to your MySpace blog. This lets you keep a current MySpace profile without any extra work. Users of the plugin have the option of publishing a notification or a whole story to MySpace.

Are you using WordPress for a music site? Let me know if you’ve got other suggestions for WordPress plugins for musicians.

Joey Fehrenbach’s Mellowdrama is a very welcome set of ambient/downtempo tracks. At its best, the CD mixes the beautiful otherworldliness of Brian Eno’s ambient classics with mellow beats, creating a future chill-out classic.

Read more…