
X-Ray Audio
The Strange Story of Soviet Music on the Bone
Stephen Coates(Editor)
Strange Attractor Press
Published on 8. December 2015
Book
Paperback/Softback
160 pages
978-1-907222-38-2 (ISBN)
Description
Telling the story of forbidden culture, bootleg technology and human endeavour, this is the secret history of Russian X-ray records and of the people who made, bought and sold them.Many older people in Russia remember seeing and hearing mysterious vinyl flexi-discs when they were young. They had partial images of skeletons on them, could be played like gramophone records and were called 'bones' or 'ribs'. They contained forbidden music.In the cold war era, the Soviet recording industry and permissible musical repertoire were ruthlessly controlled by the State. But a secret and risky subculture of bootleg recordings arose. Incredibly, bootleggers built homemade recording machines and found an extraordinary way to copy banned gramophone records - they used X-Rays clandestinely obtained from hospitals.X-Ray Audio: The Strange Story of Soviet Music on the Bone tells the secret history of these ghostly records and of the people who made, bought and sold them. Lavishly illustrated with images of discs collected in Russia, it is a unique story of forbidden culture, bootleg technology and human endeavour. Contributions from Russian musical commentators and interviews, including one with the last bootlegger standing, set the scene for the intersection of ideological, technological and historical events that created this brief Samizdat musical culture.In a time when songs can be copied in an instant and when streaming services provide virtually infinite choice and access, X-Ray Audio provides a poignant reminder of the immense cultural value of music and the extraordinary lengths people to which people will go to listen to what they love.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge
United Kingdom
Target group
US School Grade: College Graduate Student and over
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
22 s/w Abbildungen, 85 farbige Abbildungen
85 color illus., 22 b&w illus.; 107 Illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 229 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-907222-38-2 (9781907222382)
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Schweitzer Classification