Meet Marc Sallis of Blank City Records in Echo Park

Today we’d like to introduce you to Marc Sallis.

Blank City Records was founded in July 2017 by friends and band mates Marc Sallis, Brandon Burkart and Kawika Campbell. Sallis and Burkart had been playing together in The Saint James Society since 2013 and when the time came to put out new music they started discussing the idea of releasing the music on their own label. Back in the early 2000s Sallis had come across the little-known, but historically important, “Bones / Ribs Recordings” technique mastered back in the 1950s and 1960s in the Communist Soviet Union where Western music was banned and local original bands had no way of sharing their music. Behind the Iron Curtain a local artist discovered they were able to press music onto used X-Rays they found in the trash at local hospitals as a way to share banned music by Western Artists like The Beatles, Dylan, The Stones, Jazz and local artists using this technique.

This “bootlegged” music was never meant to have longevity on this temperamental and unstable material and people would just share the music until it no longer played and move onto the next one, almost like a physical representation of SnapChat. Sallis shared this idea of releasing music using this recycled and deeply personal format with his band mate Burkart and the two started making plans for their next The Saint James Society release on used Medical X-Rays. After two years of research, sourcing enough X-Rays for the project, recording and planning the two band mates told their idea to another friend, Campbell, who helped them turn the idea into more than just one release and build it into a full record label. The first release on the label, The Saint James Society’s “Covered In Blood EP” (Cat No. BCR001X) was released in July 2017 and received worldwide acclaim, receiving press from Romanian Elle to The Washington Post and even Forbes, which wrote an article about the label entitled “X-Ray Records Are Changing The Business Of Vinyl”. The label is now embarking on its fifth release (BCR005X) with local Hip-Hop artist Rafael Vigilantics, which is penciled in for a late April 2018 release.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Pressing music onto used X-Rays is probably more difficult in 2018 than it was back in 1958, mainly due to the simple fact that X-Rays are now almost exclusively viewed digitally and are rarely seen in a physical format. Because of this most of our X-Rays date back to the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s, which make these already unstable material even more temperamental when it comes to pressing on them. At least back in the 1950s and 1960s they were taking brand new clean disposed of X-Rays to press on. We’ve had to learn a lot about how to handle, clean and prep these X-Rays in order to have a successful pressing. We went from a 16% success rate on our first pressing to 80% by our third release. We’ve learned a lot on the way, which will remain trade secrets, but pressing on this recycled material is so unique and special to us that we continue to try to perfect our art.

Please tell us about Blank City Records.
As mentioned, pressing on used medical X-Rays is very unique. Whilst we’re not the first to do this, we are the first record label to use it as our business model and as the core of our business. As Forbes noted in its piece about us, “the added layer of creative functionality establishes the product as multifaceted and innovative. Rather than just throwing out an old X-ray or keeping it in an attic, people can connect their bodies to their music.” So that praise speaks for itself and we take that to heart as we really care about our bands and how their music is presented.

Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
Aside from everything to do with Star Wars, I have a very pertinent memory from childhood relating to my current business. The way we press the music onto the X-Rays is exactly the same method as pressing onto a flexi disc. And because our X-Ray releases are so limited – we never press more than 100 per run, we press an additional 150 copies of the music onto colored flexi discs. I discovered the “Ribs / Bones Recordings” by actually researching the history of flexi discs as I was obsessed with them as a kid. As a child of the 1980s I used to get flexi discs as covermounts on magazines like Look-in and Kerrang! In fact, the first record I ever owned was a flexi edition of Culture Club’s “Karma Chameleon” that came with a copy of Look-in. Like X-Rays, flexis only have a short shelf life of being played before the sound degenerates and I played that to death, to the point that my Dad took it away from me as it was ruining his turntable needle as the flexi was so worn out.

Pricing:

• Limited Edition Deluxe Original Medical X-Ray Vinyl 1/100 $20
• Limited Edition Colored Vinyl 7″ Flexi 1/150 $5

Contact Info:

• Address: 1307 Portia St,
  Los Angeles, CA 90026
• Website: www.blankcityrecords.com
• Email: info@blankcityrecords.com
• Instagram: @blankcityrecords
• Facebook: facebook.com/blankcityrecords
• Twitter: @blankcityla

Image Credit:
All Blank City Team Members shots by Muted Fawn

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