Bureau of Lost Culture – Roentgenizdat – The Hidden History of Bone Music (04/12/2022)
During the Cold War era, the songs that Soviet citizens could listen to were ruthlessly controlled by the state, a secret underground subculture of music lovers and bootleggers defied the censors, building recording machines and making their own extraordinary discs cut onto used hospital x-ray film.
Today’s special guest is, er…Stephen Coates.
My new book BONE MUSIC details how the x-ray bootleggers worked, and reveals for the first time, the hidden history of their archivist precursors in Budapest. Who were they? Why did they do it and how was this Roentgenizdat (private pressing on xray) even possible?
Cultural Commentator TRAVIS ELBOROUGH returns to the Bureau and we swap seats so that he can interview me.
We dig into the culture of the Soviet X-Ray Underground, the character of the bootleggers, cold war culture, cultural repression and ask if Bone Music has anything to say about current censorship in Russia.
www.x-rayaudio.com/bonemusicbook
www.bureauoflostculture.com
