X-RAY AUDIO: A story of forbidden music, Cold War culture and Soviet bootleg technology

*THE COLLOQUIUM FOR UNPOPULAR CULTURE presents:*

*X-RAY AUDIO: A STORY OF FORBIDDEN MUSIC, COLD WAR CULTURE AND SOVIET
BOOTLEG TECHNOLOGY*

*- lecture, demonstration and live performance: first time in North America*

*WHEN: Wednesday 6 May 2015, 7:15pm*
*WHERE:* Lecture Hall 122, Department of Physics, 4 Washington Place [at
Broadway], New York, NY
*FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC*

Event Link*: *https://events.nyu.edu/#event_id/61756/view/event




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'The Age of the Bones' was a period lasting about 15 years during which the
sound of forbidden Russian and Western music became associated with images
of the human skeleton. Many older people in the Soviet Union remember
seeing and hearing strange vinyl flexi-discs when they were young. These
discs had partial images of skeletons on them and were called 'Bones' or
'Ribs'. In the post-war period, both the Soviet recording industry and its
permissible musical repertoire were ruthlessly controlled by the State. A
secret, risky and vibrant trading subculture in bootleg recordings of
forbidden music arose.These were made on used x-rays sneaked out from
hospitals, cut into discs, and engraved with the grooves of copied
gramophone records. These beautifully ghostly and mysterious discs were the
audio equivalent of 'samizdat' published works.

This remarkable story will be told by Stephen Coates using photographs,
essays, sound and film with testimonies from surviving Russians. Aleks
Kolkowski will provide a commentary on groove-based recording techni​ques.
There will also be a very rare demonstration of recording direct-to-disc
and from a special live musical performance with the use of x-ray plates
and a vintage analogue record-cutting lathe.

*More information:*
http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/jan/29/bone-music-soviet-bootleg-records-pressed-on-xrays

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*STEPHEN COATES* is a graduate of the Royal College of Art, performs with
The Real Tuesday Weld, and is author of the X-Ray Audio project. In 2010 he
wrote and presented the eight-part radio series Sounds of Propaganda and
the Cold War.

*ALEKS KOLKOWSKI* is a composer, recent London Science Museum sound
artist-in-residence, and early recording researcher who has explored the
potential of historical sound recording and reproduction technology,
combining horned violins, gramophones and wax cylinder phonographs, to make
contemporary mechanical-acoustic music.

*SVETLANA SHMULYIAN* is a band leader and vocalist who performs with her
own swing group Svetlana & The Delancey Five as well as an avant-garde
electronic noise-rock duo. She has headlined at venues such as Barbes,
Smalls and B.B. Kings.

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*Queries:* [email protected]

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Ksenia Nouril
Doctoral Candidate, Art History
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
Graduate Curatorial Assistant
Norton & Nancy Dodge Collection of Nonconformist Art
Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum
[email protected]
+1.917.767.8024

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