Mix: Quexotic Adventures #045:
live on NSB 22nd Oct 2011

Deep tech breaks, melodic electro, and of course epic progressive and psychedelic breaks.
Download (174.6MB 192kbps MP3 127’10”) [downloadcounter(quextal_live_on_nsb_2011-10-22.mp3)] downloads

Download (174.6MB 192kbps MP3 127’10”) [downloadcounter(quextal_live_on_nsb_2011-10-22.mp3)] downloads

Link to generate podcast enclosure

Categories: Mixes, Radio Archives // Tags: dark, deep, electro, melodic, nsb, nuskool breaks, progressive breaks, psybreaks, quexotic, tech breaks, techbreaks

Artists: BSD, Breakzhead, Chamber, Digibox, Dr Fish, El-tron, Elektronauts, Espion, HardNoise, Helskanki, Kwah, LuQas, Mad-Tek, Mafia Kiss, Means, Metabreed, Metha, Nelver, Oliver Morgenroth, Plump DJs vocal, Retroid, Rhino Drum, Sam Hell, Sasha, Simulant, Spirallianz, Triple Agent, Two Lone Swordsmen, Ways

Labels: Bass4Bots, Broken Robot, Choo Choo, Cosm, Darkdance, Digital Distortions, Dusted Breaks, Jetlag, Lacerba, RUNE, Subtribe, VIM, Warp, Young NRG, breaks.sk, iBreaks, soundcloud

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live on NSB 22nd Oct 2011

Beatport Dark Theme
alternative colour scheme for new Beatport

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…)

Categories: Misc // Tags: argh my eyes, Beatport, blinded, color, colour, CSS, dark, Firefox, Safari, stylesheet, sunglasses, theme

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alternative colour scheme for new Beatport

Mix: Tales Of The Interstitial episode XIII:
live on PsyMusic 17th Aug 2010
with special guest Fat Mandy / Mr Faster

TOTI is one year old! To celebrate, I was delighted to welcome Jon Ward, in his Fat Mandy and Mr Faster guises, to join me in the studio for both live PA and DJ sets.

After a brief intro from yours truly, Fat Mandy kicked off the show in future-retro style with an Ableton set of electro-swing. I spun a set of progressive and psybreaks after that, then it was the mighty Fat Mandy Live PA, lush evolving breakbeat squelch, interstitially poised somewhere between breaks, dnb and chill. Then Jon switched hats to his Mr Faster persona and we went back to back for nearly three hours of psytrance, rolling, dark, forest, bouncy, you name it. Wicked fun times!

Thanks to Jon for coming along (he’ll be back!), and for all the shoutbox crew for keeping us company!

(In the tracklists below, Jon’s selections are this colour).

Download (437.0MB 192kbps MP3 318’13”) [downloadcounter(quextal_live_on_psymusic_2010-08-17_full_show_with_fat_mandy_mr_faster.mp3)] downloads (This is the archive of the whole 5+ hour show. Alternatively you can download individual sections below.)

0. Intro

1. Fat Mandy electro-swing DJ set

Download (75.5MB 192kbps MP3 54’59”) [downloadcounter(quextal_live_on_psymusic_2010-08-17_part_1_fat_mandy_dj_set.mp3)] downloads

2. Quextal progressive/techno/psybreaks DJ set

Download (55.6MB 192kbps MP3 40’27”) [downloadcounter(quextal_live_on_psymusic_2010-08-17_part_2_quextal_progressive_and_psybreaks.mp3)] downloads

3. Fat Mandy Live PA

Download (69.6MB 192kbps MP3 50’42”) [downloadcounter(quextal_live_on_psymusic_2010-08-17_part_3_fat_mandy_live_pa.mp3)] downloads

4. Mr Faster vs Quextal psytrance DJ set

Download (223.2MB 192kbps MP3 162’31”) [downloadcounter(quextal_live_on_psymusic_2010-08-17_part_4_quextal_vs_mr_faster_b2b_dj_set.mp3)] downloads

Categories: Mixes, Radio Archives // Tags: breakbeat, dark, electro-swing, forest, interstitial, live, progressive, psy, psybreaks, psymusic, psytrance

Artists: 1200 Mics, 8220 GOA, ?, Analogik, Andrey Mute, Atriohm, Audiohazard, Benny Berigan, Bombax, Chinese Man, Chris Nemmo, Comadust, Der Dritte Raum, Dickster, Dirty Sole, Dunklebunt, Eat Static, Electrypnose, Encephalopaticys, Fat Mandy, Flanger, Fletric, Frohlocker, Gramophonedzie, Highpersonic Whomen, Home Alone, Jellyfish, Kiwa, Klopfgeister, Kormac, Lena Horne, Loose Connection, Loud, Lucas, Neurodriver, Normalize, Orquesta Del Plata, Parov Stelar, Perfect Stranger, Philter, Psilodump, Quantum, Red Nichols, Schatsi, Scorb, Sensient, Sun Control Species, Techtonic, Troll Scientists, album, cosmo, dub

Labels: ?, Auraquake, Bombtraxx, Demon Tea, Digital Psionics, Digital Sensation UK, Ego Shot, Exogenic, Flying Rhino Digital, Futureaudio, Highly Evolved, Iboga, PsyLife, PsyTropic, Spin Twist, TIP World, Trick, Zenon

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live on PsyMusic 17th Aug 2010
with special guest Fat Mandy / Mr Faster

Mix: Tales Of The Interstitial episode VII:
live on PsyMusic 19th Jan 2010

If you’ve been struggling to get through all the recent 4+ hour shows, you’ll be pleased to hear that this month’s Interstitial clocks in at a mere 3½ 😀 Although since I only just posted December’s, you may have quite a lot of catching up to do… 😉

Warning: it starts off very glitchy: I think I inadvertantly lost a few listeners in the first minute who thought there must be a technical problem. Oops. Nope, it’s just a weird intro track from P&G…

After the intro we kick off with two of my latest artist discoveries: dope crunky beats from Opiuo, and blissed out fusion sounds from The Nasha Experience. Then we go delving into the darker, glitchier side of psybreaks and electro for a while. That leads into some techy and progressive 4/4s, before we bring the breaks back on an epic trippy nuskool tip, throwing in some techno and tech-funk for good measure, and finally bringing you down gently with a more chilled dub-tech breakbeat vibe.

Big ups all the Shoutbox crew for their support, especially n0sS – another enthusiastic new convert to Quextal’s Radical Interstitialism 😀 See you next time!

Download (297MB 192k MP3 216’27”) [downloadcounter(quextal_live_on_psymusic_2010-01-19.mp3)] downloads

Download (297MB 192k MP3 216’27”) [downloadcounter(quextal_live_on_psymusic_2010-01-19.mp3)] downloads

Categories: Mixes, Radio Archives // Tags: bliss, dark, electro, electrobreaks, glitchy, interstitial, progressive, progressive psytrance, psybreaks, psymusic, techno

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Mix: Live on Brap FM with Digital Fist 7th Sep 2009

Many thanks to my guest Digital Fist for bringing his unique blend of deep and dark glitchy and hypnotic breaks and techno to tonight’s proceedings. He’ll be back (in the meantime, if you need more glitch to sustain you, I recommend picking up his latest mix, it’s a corker). And a big shout to all the listeners and chatters, record-breaking numbers of both 🙂

Download (170MB 192k MP3 124’18”) [downloadcounter(quextal_live_on_brap_fm_2009-09-07_with_digital_fist.mp3)] downloads

Download (170MB 192k MP3 124’18”) [downloadcounter(quextal_live_on_brap_fm_2009-09-07_with_digital_fist.mp3)] downloads

Next show: Tuesday 15th Sep, 19:00 BST, PsyMusic: the next episode of Tales Of The Interstitial…

Categories: Mixes, Radio Archives // Tags: brapfm, breaks, dark, deep, glitch, techno

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Mix: Late Nite Tech Trip

Well. I got back from the pub about midnight, and then instead of going to bed like any normal person who has to be up at 7am next day, I stayed up and did a mix from the CDs I’ve just burned of the minimal techno I bought online yesterday and haven’t listened to yet. I’d inscribed the CD “Techno and/or Minimal” but it now seems the “or” was superfluous. This is not deep, chilled minimal like the middle part of this mix, and neither is it full-on hard stompy techno. It occupies that perfect centre of afterhours music (as far as I’m concerned) where it is equally suited to dancing around the lounge, hipswinging while seated, mild head nodding, or non-motile appreciation in a more horizontal and relaxed position (but definitely not sleep.) Most importantly of course, it progresses, it journeys, it trips, and takes you with it through different places and spaces in your imagination. It is alchemical – by means of sound, it creates images, feelings, sensations. Or, you create, it facilitates. I merely facilitate the facilitation. And I LOVE doing it.

There’s probably a couple of rough edges due to the fact that I was (and am) a bit mullered (could you tell?), I’ve never played these tunes before, and I couldn’t hear very well as I kept the volume low out of respect for my neighbours at this hour. But sod excuses, I managed to blow my own head off repeatedly both during the mix and listening to it back afterwards, so I thought I’d share it with you. Hope you like it, and as always your feedback is always welcome (add a comment or send an email).

Download MP3 (83MB 192k 60’21”) [downloadcounter(quextal_late_nite_tech_trip.192.mp3)] downloads

This mix is also known as:
“If you don’t love minimal techno… You Will.”

1. (00’00”) Bigger Than Jesus – Itchy Glitchy Spider (Fergie rx) – Silver Planet
2. (05’24”) Bread and Butter – Kartoffel – Hot Slice
3. (10’35”) Cabal – All In Off – Subtronic
4. (14’03”) Patrice D’Angelo – Happy Lab – Freaky Cabs
5. (19’59”) James Unk – Drop – Lessizmore
6. (25’34”) Javy Union – Gate 9 (Pascal Feos rx) – Plain
7. (31’42”) Jesse Voorn ft ZoXenia – SeeMe (DJ Lion dub) – USB Digital
8. (37’13”) Sara Galli – Machete – 303Lovers
9. (41’25”) The Junkies – Uneasy Feeling – PBR Recordings
10. (47’21”) The Touch – Heart Of The City (Pig & Dan rx dub version) – Trunkfunk
11. (53’32”) Utku Dalmaz – Little More – Bosphorus Underground

By popular request, I’ve upped the audio quality: from now on studio mix MP3s will be 192kbps.

Download MP3 (83MB 192k 60’21”) [downloadcounter(quextal_late_nite_tech_trip.192.mp3)] downloads

Link to generate podcast enclosure

Categories: Mixes, Promo Mixes // Tags: afterhours, dark, minimal, spooky, techno

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