How a PlayStation Game Sparked Career Ambition for Bastian Bux

“I was not really a good guy in school. I was a bit of a troublemaker,” Spanish DJ and producer Bastian Bux recalled of a pivotal moment in his journey as an electronic music artist during his Gray Area Spotlight interview.

“I was in a room [during detention] full of old CDs and magazines, and there was an old PlayStation game called Music 2000," he said. "I took it and brought it home, and I didn’t even have a PlayStation, but one of my neighbors did.”

Music 2000 (known as MTV Music Generator in the United States) was released on the original PlayStation in November of 1999. It featured a basic music sequencer with 24 audio channels as well as a slew of familiar and unfamiliar sounds to play with, even allowing effects such as reverb and delay to be applied to each channel. It was all powered by the PlayStation’s 33.86 MHz processor.

It was limited in its scope and capability, and despite the claims on its packaging, users were unlikely to “become the next superstar” playing Music 2000. But according to then-16-year-old Bastian Bux, that didn’t stop the game from making a momentous impact on him.

“I will always remember what I felt when I played it for the first time," Bastian said. "My life changed. That was the moment I knew 100% that I wanted to do this for the rest of my life. That was the very beginning.”

It planted the early seeds of a career that would eventually blossom into a robust catalog of original jacking techno and house grooves, performances in over 50 countries, and releases on some of the most prestigious record labels in dance music. Among them are John Digweed’s Bedrock Records and Nicole Moudaber's Mood Records. He even landed a residency with the prominent Spanish event production company elrow.

And by all accounts, it all started with a pair of analog joysticks, a CRT TV, and a dream conjured from the backrooms of the Breakfast Club.