Photo of the Day: Margin Records, Xi’an

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10:45 PM HKT, Fri April 20, 2018 1 mins read

In celebration of International Record Store Day, which falls on April 21 this year, our photo theme this week is Record Shopping in China. Though vinyl culture never quite caught on China in quite the same way as it did in other parts of the world, it’s on the rise. This week we’ll put the spotlight on some of the best shops in China to pick up new tunes.

Like most cities in China, Xi’an doesn’t have a huge vinyl-loving community, but it is growing — and Margin Records is very much at its center.

Margin Records was founded by long-time vinyl hoarder Feng Fan, who first had the idea back in 2014. “The original aim was just to be able to share my records with more diggers, I certainly didn’t plan to open a physical shop. After all, in an era when physical record shops have become almost extinct, opening such a store seems like an expensive form of nostalgia — not to mention doing so in a second-tier city like Xi’an.”

Record Store Day 2017 at Margin Records

In 2016, Feng started cooperating with Xiangwang Bookstore, taking over a section of the shop to sell records. “Although the space here is limited, we try and ensure it’s ‘small but good quality,'” he says. “Every record has been carefully chosen.”

The collection reflects the interests of its owner genre-wise. Feng is also an experimental producer, and therefore Margin’s shelves are stacked mostly with jazz, experimental music, and psychedelic and avant-garde rock.

Margin Records founder Feng Fan (right)

This year, Margin Records are teaming up with promoters/DJ and producer collective The Boring Room for a Record Store Day event at Hound Dog, a hotdog vendor-cum-mini record store in the city, with Gunknown and Benny set to deliver all-vinyl DJ sets.