The local independent record stores (those still existed back in 1992) like Bill’s, VVV, and Oak Lawn all accepted copies of x-eleven’s “charm+spin extended play” 12” on consignment. Basically, they put them on the shelf and if they sold any, I could come back in later and collect a portion of the sales price. I’m not sure if a single copy of “charm+spin” ever sold because I never bothered to go back and check. One lesson I learned quickly was that while I enjoyed making music, I had no interest in selling it. As soon as I was finished with a track, I didn’t have a use for it anymore. I hated to be bothered with selling my old records when there were new songs to be written. Also, I was shy and hated pestering DJs and store managers about my records. That didn’t stop me from sending copies of the EP to as many radio stations as I could, though. Jeff K at KDGE got one of the first copies. At the time, there were a number of Dallas acts making techno records: Global, NASA Project, Digital One, Balance, and Channel 69 were the biggest names in town. KDGE had been releasing CDs of local music a couple of times a year, and when Jeff K called to tell me that an x-eleven track would be included on the next local compilation CD along with these other acts, I was blown away. Surely, international fame and remixing contracts couldn’t be far behind. I fought the urge to quit my job and continued writing new songs. It was now 1993, and while I waited for the KDGE compilation CD to be released, I worked on a pair of tracks with a darker edge, “Barbaric” and “Beyond the Ether.” I didn’t want x-eleven to only be associated with the softer sound of a track like “Past Passion,” so I brought some of the old industrial elements back into a more modern techno structure for these two songs. At around the same time, Todd began experimenting with an Amiga application called DPaint. Dpaint was the Amiga’s flagship graphics and animation package, and it was great for making short psychedelic video clips. Using a Hi-Fi stereo VCR, he discovered that by recording an entire audio track onto videotape, video clips could be punched-in on the beat without disturbing the sound. Since the audio quality of a Hi-Fi VHS deck is close to that of a DAT recorder, Todd had discovered a way to make very high quality music videos with only a $1000 computer and a $500 VHS deck. Well, technically, you also needed a $300 copy of DPaint, but very few Amiga users ever paid for software, and we were no exception. This is one of the big reasons you’ve probably never heard of Amiga computers, by the way. Anyway, with videos for every song, an x-eleven “performance” would be more exciting than most other techno acts of the day, most of whom followed the Prodigy model of running a tape and hiring a couple of dancers to distract the audience while the musicians pretended to play. An x-eleven show would still be mostly taped, but the video would become the centerpiece. With Todd as the video artist, x-eleven officially became a two-man project. Within a couple of months, Todd had produced videos for “Past Passion”, “Barbaric,” and “Beyond the Ether.” The KDGE compilation CD came out in May 1993, and Jeff K began playing “Past Passion” on his Edge Club show. It had been a rush just getting played on KNON, so airplay on KDGE was unreal. Lots of people listened to Jeff’s show as they were heading out to a night of clubbing at Aqualounge or One. It seems silly as I write this 10 years later and 1500 miles away in California, but back then I really felt like I had accomplished something. The radio station that had inspired me on all of those long commutes to work and school was playing a song I had written and recorded. Anyone who has experienced the same thing will tell you just how amazing a feeling it is. Early that summer, KDGE organized a live showcase for the bands on the CD, and x-eleven had a 20-minute slot to fill. I had plenty of songs, but I didn’t just want to play them one after another with gaps inbetween. I’d seen a Global show at the Lizard Lounge with my girlfriend a few weeks before and been really impressed with the way they strung all of their tunes together in one long mix, just like a DJ in a club would. I decided to do the same, and concatenated bits of all of the best x-eleven tracks to that point into one giant 20-minute sequence and composed transitions between the songs. Todd took an early cut of the mix and started preparing a video. It’s tough to imagine now, but in 1993 nobody had ever heard of a “Gigabyte,” personal computer CPUs had yet to reach 100MHz, and most of the few people who used the internet did so at 2400 baud. Our little plastic Amigas were already obsolete and chugged along at a painfully slow pace. An Amiga could only hold a single animation clip that might be used for 4 or 8 bars of music, and loading the clip into the computer was a frustrating exercise in swapping floppy disks as fast as possible. Add to this the problems of searching for and digitizing video source material and the frequent Amiga “Guru Meditation” crashes, and Todd was in for a whole lot of work. With only a couple of weeks to prepare for the show, Todd and I got little sleep as we tweaked the mix and video right up until the morning of the show. Now, the best video in the world is useless if no one can see it. Back then I didn’t even own a TV and Todd just had a 19” set. We needed big TVs and as many of them as possible for the show. I called a rental shop in Hurst and arranged to rent three 25” sets for a week, the shortest duration they would agree to. They were ungainly and heavy; the rental guy said they were identical to the sets used in Texas prisons, so we didn’t worry too much about damaging them. The show at the Bomb Factory that night went off great, ensuring that the same integrated music and video format would be used at every x-eleven show to come. Although doing shows was always fun, I preferred concentrating on writing songs. I wanted to put out another 4-song EP by the year’s end, but I only had one new track that I felt was worthy of release, “Beyond the Ether.” One night I caught a Digital One performance at the Baja Beach Club in Arlington and was really affected by the music. It’s difficult to articulate, but there was a quality to it that was at once uplifting and yet slightly melancholy. Watching the crowd dance to the deep house beat and syncopated piano parts, I felt as though I were looking into the future. In a sense, I was -- although Digital One wouldn’t be around for long, the sound is still being played in clubs today. I returned home that night determined to capture that mood in a song of my own. The resulting track, “Within the Ether,” recorded over the space of a month in the summer of 1993, is probably the best in the x-eleven catalog. It would be the next to receive airplay on KDGE, although it would have to wait for the next EP release several months later.