Ep409: Romanus Records - Innovating with Vinyl
The Vinyl Guide - Artist Interviews for Record Collectors and Music Nerds
Nate Goyer
4.7 • 579 Ratings
🗓️ 14 August 2023
⏱️ 70 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Romanus Records is known for producing beautiful and extrodinarily innovative vinyl records. Chris Banta, founder of Romanus, shares how he approaches his craft and continues push the boundaries and assumptions of the vinyl record format.
Emmy Award winning Video of "My Weird Life" featuring Chris & Romanus Records.
Topics include:
- Is Romanus Records a label?
- The early experimentation of Romanus
- Stuff he's put into records – bullets, glitter, blood/fluid, real scorpions, shredded money, razor blades, etc
- Making a working guitar pedal in a record
- Chris' skillset and background – Vinyl Jawa
- Typical Romanus release bundles
- Special limited records are all hand made
- Who presses the records?
- The recent challenges of vinyl supply chain
- King Gizzard bootleg model
- The community around King Gizzard
- Polygondawanaland paid for his son's surgery
- Creating the Holographic effect on vinyl
- Balancing the visual effects and sound quality
- Green glow in the dark records seem to have more quality issues
- How does he create Romanus' hand-made filled records
- Focused on innovation and high quality
- How do we care for liquid-filled records?
- Early liquid-filled records – Disney was the first
- Jay Millar's blood records w The Flaming Lips
- Making records for well known artists – Fall Out Boy –'tear-infused records', Slime Language
- Importance of getting credit for doing special records for other artists
- What lead time do you need for creating a special hand-made record?
- The largest order he had to fulfill – challenging logistics
- Thoughts from Chris on how to find the right career path
- Persistence is required for doing anything you're passionate about
- If you're being adventurous, you're going to suck for awhile
- Salty Dog Records, Private Function
- Interview wrap up
Extended, Commercial-Free & High Resolution version of this podcast is available at: www.Patreon.com/VinylGuide
Listen on Apple: https://apple.co/2Y6ORU0
Listen on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/36qhlc8
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This episode is brought to you by Vintage Media Grading at VMGVinyl.com. |
| 0:04.1 | Explore how professional grading can protect your records at VMGVinyl.com. |
| 0:09.1 | And now on with the show. |
| 0:13.1 | Oh, well, hey everyone, it's Nate. |
| 0:15.7 | Welcome to episode 409 of The Vinyl Guide, the podcast for record collectors and music nerds, and this week |
| 0:22.8 | we have on the show Chris Banta of Romanois Records talking about his vinyl innovations. Now, Chris |
| 0:30.9 | is owner and Chief Jawa of Romanus Records and has been doing some incredible work in recent years |
| 0:37.4 | pushing the possibilities |
| 0:39.2 | of the vinyl record format. |
| 0:41.3 | Handmaking records filled with items and objects. |
| 0:45.4 | You know, liquid-filled records, sand-filled records, multiple colors in chambers of sand |
| 0:51.3 | and liquid, razor blades, gunpowder, mazes with ball bearings, records |
| 0:57.1 | with LED lights in them, a working guitar effect pedal made within a vinyl record with knobs |
| 1:04.2 | and everything, Romano's Records is always developing, innovating, experimenting, and looking |
| 1:10.5 | to develop a new and cool approach |
| 1:12.8 | for vinyl enthusiasts. And Chris shares plenty of that today. Plus, a video on Romano's |
| 1:19.1 | records, My Weird Life, just won an Emmy. That video is on YouTube, and I'll link to it |
| 1:25.7 | in this episode page, well worth checking out out and seeing how Chris approaches the creative process and makes some amazing products. |
| 1:35.5 | And also, please note, we have an extended version of this interview only available to show patrons at patreon.com slash vinyl guide. We always provide extras to our show |
| 1:48.4 | supporters, you know, those lovely good-looking people who support our podcast through Patreon. |
| 1:54.6 | All episodes up there are commercial free, high resolution, so they sound better, and quite often |
| 2:00.5 | we provide more of the interviews with the artists. |
... |
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