In 2001, Rob moved from rural Michigan to Los Angeles at 21. Unfamiliar city, unfamiliar people, third-shift work at a youth hostel near LAX. The music that got him through it was trance. This is what it’s meant to him in the 23 years since.
How It Started
Growing up near Detroit, Rob was already familiar with house music. Los Angeles brought a different sound. Through travelers at the hostel, he found di.fm, the growing trance community, and a new show called A State of Trance. Long third-shift nights became bearable. People passing through from other countries who loved the same music made the world feel smaller.
What Trance Did During the Hard Parts
At 36, Rob had a cardiac event and survived with a 17.5% chance. During recovery in the hospital, he listened to old ASOT episodes while walking the floor. Nurses asked what he was listening to. He told them: trance music. It didn’t just feel good — it felt like a reason to move, to get up, to keep going.
A few years later, surgery to address injuries from a teenage accident he’d never received care for. Less than 24 hours after the operation, Rob was walking to the local coffee shop and back — leaving the nursing staff both pleased and confused. He says it was the beat.
Twenty-Three Years In
The PLUR values — Peace, Love, Unity, Respect — that run through trance culture are ones Rob has carried across every version of his life: the hardware repair, the maker builds, the streaming, the music he produces himself. The cardiac event at 36 is the same event behind the Bonus Life N64 build on Twitch now. Same fuel, different project.
If you’ve been in the trance community for any part of the last two decades, some version of this story is yours too.
Rob streams live builds and makes original music every Tuesday and Saturday at 7pm Eastern on Twitch. The Bonus Life N64 build — a complete custom Nintendo 64 being rebuilt from scratch and given away July 3rd, 2026 — is the current main series.