Just a note to say that Bone Music - the
follow-up to the acclaimed X-Ray Audio - by Stephen
Coates, has now been sent to print.
If you missed the first book, Bone Music is the
perfect opportunity to learn about the fascinating history of bootleged music in
the Soviet Union, and the strangely ingenious techniques of the 'bone
cutters' - bootleggers who cut tracks onto discarded x-rays.
We're currently taking pre-orders on both the hardback special edition
and the standard paperback, so do order now to avoid
disappointment.
32 pages of colour images, heavily illustrated
throughout
Projected publication date: 14 September
2022.
Hardback: £45 Signed, limited edition of
350 copies
– Includes an exclusive risograph print and a 7″
flexidisc of original 1930s Soviet-era music taken “off the bone”
(Hungarian jazz and a Russian ballad).
Paperback: £25
“There were two types of culture… Official culture and
underground culture. I was always for underground culture.” Rudy Fuchs,
Bone cutter and collector
During the Cold War era, the songs that Soviet citizens could listen to were
ruthlessly controlled by the state. But a secret underground subculture of music
lovers and bootleggers defied the censors, building recording machines and
making their own records of forbidden jazz, rock ‘n’ roll, and
Russian music, cut onto used hospital x-ray film.
Who were they? Why did they do it and how was it even possible? Based on
years of interviews and oral testimonies, Bone Music continues the story of
X-Ray Audio, presenting the stories of the original Bone bootleggers, their
customers and persecutors, evoking their spirit of resistance to a repressive
culture of prohibition and punishment.
Bone Music details how the bootleggers worked, outlining the technical
precedents of their techniques in the work of their archivist precursors in
Budapest and situating their discs in a revised history of recorded media with a
wealth of compelling new detail.
