p s y g l i t c h t e c h a c i d p r o g e l e c t r o d u b m i n i m a l + b r e a k s t r a n c e h o u s e d n b t e c h n o c r u n k c h i l l +
Quextal (/ˈkwɛkstəl/) is a DJ & producer of epic progressive and psychedelic music, based in Southampton UK.
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The fact that this is only the second time I ‘ve gone to the trouble of recommending someone else’s mix on this site, should tell you I don’t do so lightly. Frankly it takes a very special mix to motivate me to the effort of writing a post about it!
But there’s no question that this is just such a mix, and who better to deliver it than someone who repeatedly delivers the goods in both his DJ sets and his outstanding productions: Hedflux. From the first few seconds of the opening track, his own Introversion — which, by the way, he has now kindly offered up as a free download — to the blistering finale, we are taken on a beautifully evolving journey whose variety of sounds and landscapes offers a far greater range of stimulants for body and mind than you (or I) might have thought possible from such an apparently narrow focus on one subgenre.
In the past I’ve tended to find the majority of tech-funk rather dull – it often fails to add sufficient interest, rhythmic melody or groove to its instrumentation to make up for its simplistic beat structure (relative to breaks), earning it the nickname “plodstep” among its detractors. But Hedflux has often produced exceptions to this rule, and this is a mix of the exceptions (his and others’); while I might not personally like every single tune on here, there’s no plodding here, no dull moments, which is really saying something when there’s hardly a broken beat in sight for the whole 80 minutes. This is truly the state of the art.
You may have seen that Beatport has had a facelift recently. The old creakily slow Flash interface that you needed to peer at with binoculars to read the text has finally been swept into the bin, to be replaced by a swanky new HTML5-based site. “New Beatport” has a nice clean design, and seems more responsive, and a lot more intuitive.
So congrats to Beatport, and indeed, yay… but I have a problem with it. It’s all gone a bit… well… white…
Maybe it’s because I spent my formative years programming on greenscreen monitors, but I’ve never found black text on a white background very pleasant to look at on a screen, and I dispute the rationale behind it which is leading to it becoming a de facto standard on the web. Black-on-white is certainly good for printed text on paper, but on a backlit computer screen, it means you’re staring at bright unfiltered fluorescent tubes (or LED equivalents) all day. I don’t think it’s a good idea for anyone, but it’s a more serious problem for me personally: my eyes are unusually sensitive to light and I really can’t be spending hours tune shopping on Beatport with the glare of a thousand suns boring into my retinas.
So I fixed it. One of the great things about increasing web standards compliance, is that it grants us, as individuals users, a great deal of flexibility to adjust aspects of a site to better fit our individual requirements and preferences, which can range from a small style tweak to full-scale dynamic page rewriting by the likes of Greasemonkey. But in this case, all I want to do is change the colour of various elements on the page, so a User Stylesheet is just the ticket.
Here’s my User Stylesheet to modify Beatport’s colour scheme. I wrote it mainly for my benefit, but I suspect there will be others of you who prefer the old Beatport colours of light text on a dark background, so I’ve made it available to everyone in the public domain. You may use and copy it without restriction.
This is exactly the same Beatport page as the picture above, but with my stylesheet applied:
If you want it to look like that for you, here’s what you have to do: (more…)
Because G+ currently lacks any equivalent of Facebook “Page”s, what I’ve done is to set this up as a separate acccount, purely for my music-related activities. This should ensure that I don’t drown you, my beloved fans, in irrelevant updates about my other interests, while conversely not pestering those of my friends who aren’t into my music (I know, right?) with news of my latest mix or gig.
As with all my social networking, my policy is to supply you with infrequent, high-quality, informational updates about things that you are likely to be interested in as a devoted Quextalyte 🙂
The observant may also have noticed a Google ‘+1’ icon taking its place at the top of every article alongside the Facebook ‘Like’ button. As I understand it, using the ‘+1’ button is a Google rather than a Google+ thing (although it does integrate with the latter). So if you have a Google account, feel free to click on it as a way of recommending the article 🙂
Just for this month (July 2011), my NSB Radio show Quexotic Adventures will be swapping places with the Yellowfinger Variety Show, ie it will be on the second and fourth Saturdays (at the usual time, 7pm BST), then revert to the first and third for August. I have a hectic gig schedule in September so there might be other changes then – follow me on Facebook or Twitter to keep up with the latest.
So the revised dates are: 9th July; 23rd July; 6th August; 20th August.
I’d really appreciate your help in spreading the word about this. Share the links, tell your friends, whore me out. Being my first release, my name is not well known: people are only going to find this tune by serendipity, or by people like you kindly telling them about it. So you’d be doing them a favour! 🙂
It’s been a long road getting this out of the door… manifest thanks to everyone who helped it into the world, especially Greg (VIM) for signing me up in the first place, Adam (Re:Creation) for the great mastering, John Snook for the session at his when I was stuck without monitors, Deirdre and Mike for important moral support, and everyone else who provided feedback and encouragement.
It’s been a few months… so to mark the return of Quextal to Psymusic Radio, I’ve bagged not one but TWO special guests who’ll be joining me live at the Towers Of The Interstitial high-rise studio on Tue 14th Jun….
> > > RE:CREATION < < <
…returning for a second visit to these shores after rocking the show back in February of last year (gosh, has it been that long?) and rocking dancefloors up and down the land with his high-octane mind-blending psytrance and psybreaks.
And joining us for the first time, a man who in a very short space of time has established himself as one of the foremost psybreaks producers at large today (though rumour has it you might start hearing some psytrance from him at some point…) > > > UNCONSCIOUS MIND(S) < < <
Together they are the evil geniuses behind Psychoactive Records, so expect plenty of EXCLUSIVE future tunes from that label, plus just generally some of the sickest psychedelic breaks and doof in the known galaxy.
DO NOT MISS THIS. Tune in live from 7.30pm UK time by going to Psymusic Radio and clicking on the icon for your player. Don’t forget to join us in the chatroom too, using the Chat link on that page.
Hope to see some of you at Technosis vs Decayed at the Soul Cellar in Southampton on Thu 28th April 2011. Featuring Chris Liberator upstairs, Mobius and Quextal downstairs plus many more…
Sat 23rd Apr Charity All-dayer @ The King Alfred, Southampton 3pm-2am £2 (Quextal playing chilled beats 6.30-7.30pm) Facebook Event Page
Thu 28th Apr Technosis vs Decayed @ Soul Cellar, Southampton 9pm-3am £6adv (Quextal playing psybreaks and techno 1-2am) Facebook Event Page
Fri 13th – Sun 15th May Something Else Tent @ Bearded Theory Festival, Derbyshire (Slots TBA, officially I’ve been booked to play “chillout” but we’ll see 🙂 )
Fri 20th May AutomAte @ Basement45, Bristol 10pm-4am £tba (Quextal playing psybreaks)
This Wednesday 16th Mar you can catch me alongside the mighty Re:Creation spinning the finest psybreaks and psytrance at the Soul Cellar in Southampton. Get yourself on the Gonna Be Sick Facebook Groupand mention it on the way in for discounted entry of a mere two of your Earth pounds!
Yes I’ve finally got a tune coming out… my remix of Digital Breaks Foundation‘s “Going Back” will be released, along with the original and further remixes by Ghettface and Big Mistake, on VIM Breaks, hopefully next month. It’s an acid-drenched epic breaks monster! Here’s a preview:
