Over the next couple of years, I continued writing x-eleven songs and Todd kept preparing videos. We did a couple of additional shows, but none ever compared to Ravestock. We had been fortunate to work with an honest promoter in Hooman, but after getting burned by some unprincipled characters during a Halloween show in 1994, I placed a moratorium on x-eleven performances. I wanted to do a full-length CD release, but I was never able to develop a set of tracks that worked well enough together. Lots of amazing electronic music was being released in 1994 and 1995, but when I tried to incorporate some of these newer elements in my songs, the x-eleven sound became too fragmented. Never happy with the quality of my work, I avoided sending demos of the latest tracks to radio stations, preferring to wait until I had perfected the new sound. DJ culture moves quickly; if you step away for even a few months you risk being forgotten, and in the end that’s what happened to x-eleven. In 1995 and 1996 I had the opportunity to visit friends in Europe and decided to sell my equipment to pay for my vacations. I had grown tired of spending every evening sorting through nests of patch cables and listening to old records in search of samples. The joy I’d once felt twiddling synthesizer knobs had faded, and creating new sounds had begun to feel as pointless as my job at the defense plant, so in 1996 I stopped doing both. To an outsider, x-eleven must seem a roaring failure, but to me it will always be a glorious success. Although my contribution was tiny, I like to think that it had some effect; perhaps some young DJ heard “Within the Ether” on the radio and was inspired to make his own music. Or maybe some film student saw our Ravestock video and took her thesis project in a new direction afterwards. Maybe we made no difference whatsoever, but it’s still a rare privilege to experience such a memorable and enjoyable period of life, no matter how short. Gary Wicker July 2003, California