How Bastian Bux Earned Money as DJ Before Ever Touching Turntables

A DJ’s rise to fame isn’t always a straightforward one. For Deeper Purpose, a security guard’s mistake landed him a career-changing residency. For Calvin Harris, adding industry heads on the social media platform, Myspace, was his ticket to securing his manager at EMI publishing. Whatever the journey to success, what unites most DJ’s origin stories is their dedication to the graft. Spanish DJ and producer Bastian Bux also started his career in an unexpected way.

Not satisfied with sitting around waiting to get discovered, Bastian describes himself as “the kid always going around bothering people” in an interview with Gray Area in 2021. He put this energy to good use. After spending hours making coffee and photocopying at a local radio station, he eventually stepped inside a DJ booth for the first time. And this was where he had his first money-making idea.

A hip-hop teacher at school had asked him to make a compilation track for her dance group - and it was no small feat for the budding producer. She wanted him to feature around 20 tracks in just a few minutes. Unperturbed, he took her inside that same DJ booth, and with the help of Sound Search software, created a mix she was over the moon with.

“I was fascinated with the idea that she wanted to pay me,” Bastian laughs. “After that it was like a light went off in my head - if she needed this, so would every other dance teacher in town.”

And that’s how Bastian launched his career. Making the most of his high energy levels, the same personality trait which always ended him up in detention at school, he went around all the dance schools in the area, eventually making an amount of money he could only describe as “interesting.”

This allowed him to save some cash, and he eventually got his first job as a DJ. He laughs, “so I was a producer [uses air quotes] two whole years before I ever became a DJ.”

This energy has stayed with him throughout his career - and despite a short hiatus, Bastian has come back stronger than ever, releasing on Sura, Mood, and Bedrock. He’s even managed to wrangle festival slots at Tomorrowland and a residency with world-famous electronic music promoter elrow, all born from the humble beginnings of a hip-hop mixtape and that first DJ booth he was dying to get into.