Being exposed to hip-hop and other electronic music styles in elementary school in the late eighties, Ruben Bax developed an early interest in a relatively new phenomenon called house music. By the time Bax hit high school in 93, house had already taken up a prominent place in his life. He never left home without his Walkman, playing self-recorded sets from so-called pirate radio stations. During high school Bax inevitably gained more and more interest in house parties, and after attending a few of them, the DJs especially drew his attention. Finally, at the age of 15, he decided to buy his first turntable. A passion was born.
Bax learned all the aspects of mixing by himself. A long period of practicing, experimenting and exploring followed. Trying to find his way through all the different styles, Bax finally bumped into the upcoming style referred to as trance. By that time, he was already playing at various parties in his hometown Delft. Not much later the first real gig was a fact. In the renowned club NightTown in Rotterdam, the DJ gave Bax one and a half hour of his time, and afterwards praised Bax for his technical skills.
Unfortunately trance lost popularity as fast as it gained it, making it harder for an unknown trance DJ to find a place to expose himself. So Bax decided to try his luck elsewhere. The Internet turned out to be a great way to get heard. The first online mixing competition Bax entered, on one of the largest electronic music based communities on the web, was a big success. He won that competition twice in a row (2002-2004). This was reason enough for an ETS-Global resident DJ to invite Bax for a guest set in his popular show on ETS-Global.org.
The people at ETS-Global were so impressed by the guest set that they immediately offered Bax a show of his own; Perceptions. Suddenly the name Bax was mentioned together with other big names in the trance scene such as Armin van Buuren, Markus Schulz and Menno de Jong. In 2005, ETS-Global merged with another online radio station and formed ETN.FM, currently the largest free electronic dance music station on the web. Due to the increasing popularity of the show, LazerHotHits also started broadcasting the Perceptions show. The success of Perceptions brought Bax back to the dancefloors. This time not only in his own country, but also across the border.
In early 2005 Bax won the Trance Classix mix contest out of a total of 102 contestants. A performance at the Trance Classix party in Amsterdam's largest club The Powerzone followed, hosted by two major party and trance related websites together with Slam FM (former ID&T Radio). Once again, nothing but positive feedback from both the crowd and other artists performing that night. And such feedback is exactly what keeps Bax determined to look forward and continue his work.