Josh Tonnissen began his career in electronic music in 1996 when he developed an interest in vinyl mixing, however his career in music began long before that. Early on it was clear that Josh was incredibly gifted musically. From his first years in Vermont, Josh was involved in a number of funk, improvisational and acid jazz projects. He played the drums and trombone for years with many different groups performing at local events around the Montpelier area. His roots stem from the musical culture of the east coast, influences including funk, jazz, acid jazz and bluegrass. But it was not until Josh moved to California in 1996, that he got introduced to the world of electronic music. He quickly took to spinning records, as his natural musical talent came out and soon acquired two 1200s and a Rane Mixer that same year. His earliest interests were in psychedelic trance, goa and hard acid trance, including labels such as Blue Room and Flying Rhino.
His talent as a DJ developed quickly and soon he was spinning out all around the Bay area. He performed at his first event under the alias PRAXIS, named after an orginization of higher learning in Greek mythology, and has retained the name ever since. His taste in electronic music matured as his skills developed and he soon desired a deeper, more complex sound, which he found in techno. He then embarked on a progressive voyage through the many breeds of techno. During the first years of his professional DJ career, PRAXIS played sets comprised of hard, acid techno that aimed to take their listeners on a journey through astral dimensions. Josh's techno influences broadened and he soon was spinning harder, darker and intensly driving. Although, nowadays you may find him spinning anything from hard tribal techno to funky drummy tech-house or even psychedelic tech-trance. With seven years of djing under his belt, Josh has spun out at events all over the Bay area, including Love-A-Fair (Feel Good Ent.), Tickle 3(T & J Factory), Nocturnal Oasis (Orphan Prod.), Sesame Freaks (Zo prod.), Thought (Question Mark), Fast Forward (FSH Prod.), Metempsychosis (Eden Ent.) and The Flow (Sundance and Mathsound Wkshop). Not to mention the parties he's played at outside the bay area like the Friendship Festival (C.O.T.S.), Magic (Infinite Beat), Monkeybizz (Las Vegas Massive), Heaven the 2nd coming (Las Vegas, Generation X), Plastic (club in Las Vegas) and The Frog (club in Las Vegas), just to mention a few. In addition to spinning out, Josh has been throwing underground, renegade dance events all around the bay area since '97. Some of the more memorable events include: Novem, Bushido and The Beginning. But his involvement in the scene goes beyond spinning and throwing parties, he has also been a part of a number of bay area/NY collectives like the Eden Collective (NY/SF), Trance & Jungle Factory (Berkeley), Isolate Records (Berkeley), ESP Productions (Berkeley) and Technostate (SF). His infatuation with techno led him to become a writer for Lotus magazine, a free magazine dedicated to dance culture. His ability as a professional writer for techno reviews became apparent and before long he started writing for DMA Dance, BPM Culture and XLR8R (Dance culture magazines). PRAXIS's 12" techno reviews and label profiles can be found in the monthly/bimonthly publishing of all the above magazines.

Josh is currently producing a variety of electronic music; a career that his djing led him to. Since then he has been putting a lot of time and money into his studio,and is proud to own the sought after Roland TR-909, amongst a number of other eclectic gear. After months of spending days on end with his face buried in manuals, tweaking knobs and pushing buttons, Josh had taught himself electronic music synthesis, MIDI and studio mixing. Josh's choice in studio sound comes from a philosophy of 'Cosmic analog advancment', all of his equipment is analog and he strives to create an organic, raw sound in all of his work. The style of music he makes varies immensely from hard, dark techno, to funky tribal tech, to acid tech-trance, to hard breaks, to tripped out experimental and even ambient. In short, he creates unique sounds that are very difficult to categorize. In addition to his studio hardware, PRAXIS is competent in all of his software programs, including Sonic Foundry's Sound Forge, Acid Pro, Steinberg's Wavelab, Cuebase, Cakewalk and a number of others. However, he prefers to create with hardware when it comes to composing.