We host live X-Ray Audio events when we tell the story of the Soviet X-Ray bootleggers and cut new x-ray records from musical performances by artists who have included Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth), Marc Almond, Barry Adamson, Marcela Puppini, Veronika Harcsa, Lydia Kavina, Alexander Hacke (Eineinstürzende Neubauten) amongst others.
To date we have brought the project to New York University, Brooklyn's Museum of Morbid Anatomy, Strom festival Copenhagen; The Horse Hospital London; The Baltic Gateshead; TED X Krakow; Vivid Projects Birmingham; Kings College London; Krake Festival Berlin; Rough Trade London; Millennium Court Arts Centre Ireland; Berlin House of Culture; the BRIT school London; GARAGE museum, Moscow; New Hollandia, St Petersburg; HOME Manchester, Pushkin House, London, the Museum of Art, Tel Aviv, The Science Museum London, Ville Heike, Berlin and many other venues.
Contact us to discuss details of booking.
I will be telling the extraordinary story of how forbidden songs cut onto records made from x-rays defied the censor in the Cold War-era Soviet Union. with film, images and sound.
The talk will be followed by a demonstration of the art of making an x-ray record and a special performance by singer and activist Sam Lee.
Go HERE for details
I will be hosting a live podcast recording debating the countercultural power of music in modern times at the wonderful Hay Festival in mid Wales
Join Mercury Prize nominated singer and activist Sam Lee, influential singer-songwriter Vashti Bunyan and pioneering record producer Joe Boyd, who has worked with a multitude of artists from Pink Floyd to REM.
Go HERE for details
I’m privileged to be part of a stellar cast of writers and artists at the Lambeth Literary Festival Expect rare footage of bootleggers, strange films, weird stores and more ..
It’s free but you have to register for tickets
Go HERE for details
Join us in Brighton for a very special evening at The Catalyst Club
Leningrad 1946, the Cold War:
All culture in the USSR is subject to the brutal control of a totalitarian state censor. But music-mad bootleggers devise an incredible and risky way to listen to and share the music they love, copying forbidden songs onto used X-ray film and creating their own records..
Who were they? Why did they do it and how was it even possible?
Stephen Coates tells the secret history of these ‘Bone’ bootlegs of forbidden music cut onto x-ray - and of the people who made, played and paid for them.
Details HERE
Join us in celebrating the publication of Bone Music the follow up to the acclaimed X Ray Audio at the Heavenly FIlm night hosted by author Travis Elborough at FOYLES bookshop in London ‘s Charing Cross Road
As well as introducing the book, we will be showing our card winning documentary Roentggenizdat and discussing all things bootleg and x-ray
Details HERE
Join us in celebrating the publication of Bone Music the follow up to the acclaimed X Ray Audio
We will be hosting a book launch at London’s HORSE HOSPITAL on Tuesday November 1st
If you’d like to join us EMAIL us for an invite.
As well as introducing the book, there will be a short talk with films and images
More events and festival appearances to follow
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, explains their technical processes, and situates their unique discs in a revised history of recorded media with a wealth of compelling new detail.
The BONE MUSIC EXHIBITION will be in BERLIN August 14 - September 5th
There will be live events during the opening weekend 13th - 14th and on the 28th / 29th August.
As well as the exhibition there will bone record cutting from live performance by wonderful musicians, film screenings, round table discussions and collaborations with the Berlin Stasi Museum.
For more details go HERE
On Monday November 9th at 5:30 pm EST, Stephen Coates will be giving a live Zoom lecture on the Soviet x-ray bootleggers including some of the most recent research from the upcoming book ‘Bone Music’ to be published next year by Strange Attractor / MIT press.
More Details HERE
We will be in Belgium at The House of European History as part of their Restless Youth: Growing up in Europe from 1945 program.
We will be telling the story of the Soviet bootleggers and cutting a performance by our special guests the Brussels based band Dez Mona straight to x-ray to make a bone record as a demonstration of the process with our 1950s recording lathe.
More details HERE
Talk with film, images sounds and music and live X-ray cutting with Hungarian jazz star Veronica Harcsa.
See HERE for details
We will be talking, broadcasting and making x-ray records with various special musical guests at the museum in conjunction with the REBEL SOUNDS programme.
Details TBC
In conjunction with the Imperial War Museum, we will be talking, broadcasting and making x-ray records with various special musical guests at the WOMAD festival.
Details TBC
We will be talking, broadcasting and making x-ray records with three special musical guest at the RADIOPHRENIA festival.
Details TBC
We are very pleased to be taking the x-ray audio exhibition to Japan.
We are very pleased to be taking the x-ray audio exhibition to Japan.
We will be in residency at Tokyo's BA-TSU ART GALLERY in collaboration with SONY Music Japan with an exhibition BONE MUSIC and live events with local musicians
More details HERE
We will be exhibiting at DIFFUSION SOUND AND VISION 2019 in Cardiff with live event on April 5th
There will be a special live event on April 5th with live X-ray cutting from a local musician.
Go HERE for more details
Stephen will be giving three talks at the Science Museum Russian themed The Last Tsar Late event
Stephen will be speaking at the Liverpool Russian Speaking Society (in English)
Join us and sonic innovator Thurston Moore for a unique evening celebrating rebel sounds, bootleg technology and cold war culture in film, words, and music cut live with vintage recording devices.
On January 16th 2019, we will be at the ACE Hotel in Shoreditch for a special Super Collider live event with one of rock music’s most original and influential artists who will be playing live as we cut his music to make x-ray records.
DETAILS AND TICKETS HERE
The Horse Hospital, is the last bastion of underground culture in central London and amazingly is 25 years old this year. It is also where the x-ray audio project first began to exhibit and hold live events and we returning there to celebrate with an evening of x-ray cutting and some very, very special guests.
More information soon
In collaboration with the Hungarian Cultural Institute, we will be hosting an event at London's Calvert 22 Gallery
Stephen Coates will be telling the story of the Soviet X-Ray bootleggers together with his latest research into the x-ray culture of Hungary in the 1930s - 1950s.
There will be special appearance by Hungarian Indie star Veronica Harcsa who we will be recording live to create a new x-ray record.
We have been commissioned to make a residency at SOHO RADIO in London. We will be making the station's treet frontage into a temporary 'Soviet Bootleggers Room' for the duration.
During the residency we will be broadcasting five radio shows with various special guests on themes related to x-ray record culture:
THE BONE MUSIC OF THE SOVIET UNION
THE FLEXI DISC
THE SELF MADE RECORD
THE VINYL BOOTLEG
EMIGRE MUSIC
Merchandise will be on sale and we will be hosting various live events in the installation
More details soon.
The illicit but compelling story of bootleg recordings at British Library
Now rendered virtually obsolete in the age of the internet, illegal records occupy a fascinating niche in audio history.
Stephen Coates, musician and co-curator of the X-Ray Audio project, relates a whirlwind history of bootleg, pirate and counterfeit audio drawn from research into the Soviet Cold war x-ray records, Eastern bloc samizdat recordings and a surprising trove in the British Library itself.
Join us at THE BRITISH LIBRARY on February 9th to hear the incredible story of the cold war Russian bootleggers who risked imprisonment to make extraordinary records of the forbidden music they secretly loved.
And we are very pleased to announce we will be joined for a one-off and very rare musical performance by underground maverick genius BARRY ADAMSON which will be cut directly to one of his own x-rays on our 1950s recording lathe and played straight back.
BARRY ADAMSON is a multi-disciplinary artist who rose to prominence as the bass player in Magazine and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.
His critically acclaimed solo work has seen him work with some of the film industry’s most intriguing mavericks including Derek Jarman,David Lynch, Oliver Stone and Danny Boyle. Having released nine studio albums, including the 1992 Mercury Music Prize nominated ‘Soul Murder’, he has composed music for TV series, adverts, computer games and an Olivier Award winning ballet performance. .
We currently have an exhibit in the British Library's wonderful '140 YEARS OF RECORDED SOUND' exhibition
Stephen Coates wil be taking on the X-Ray Audio project at the 'SUPERSONIC: A DAY OF AUDIO ADVENTURES" event on November 25th. Details and tickets HERE
We are currently exhibiting with specially design installation at Manchester's HOME as part of the 'THE RETURN OF MEMORY' exhibition and events:
"Unofficial histories, suppressed memories and strategies of resistance all converge in our new major group exhibition, which seeks to redress the legacy of the Russian Revolution on its centenary by exploring how contemporary artists are responding to the state of the ‘New East’ today. Rather than a nostalgic look at the past, new commissions and existing works re-activate and repurpose key emblems and stories of this past – from the avant-garde and revolution to the collapse of the Communist system and ideology – addressing key questions around the concept of The Return of Memory, curated by Anya Harrison, Sarah Perks and Olya Sova."
More information HERE
At the launch party on October 20th, we will be talking about the project with a live demonstration of cutting music to x-ray with a local musician. Details HERE
The X-Ray Audio Exhibtion will be at GARAGE MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART in Moscow in a site specific, expanded and locally researched instance of the show that has been touring internationally since January 2015, gaining media attention in the UK (with major features in The Guardian, on the BBC Today program, BBC Russia, BBC Ukraine BBC World amongst many others)
The exhibition draws out the hidden accidental aesthetic of disposable street culture objects and raises them to the level of high-cultural artefacts. It evokes the era and circumstances in which they were created and tells a unique story in which music, forbidden culture, recycling, cold war politics and human endeavour intersect through original artefacts, projections, film and sound.
The exhibition will be accompanied by live events including round-table discussions on forbidden culture, a film program and a live event where X-Ray Audio demonstrate the process of cutting music to x-ray from live musical performances (as recently performed with musicians Marcella Puppini, Russian theremin player Lydia Kavina and Marc Almond.
DETAILS HERE
Join musician Stephen Coates and photographer Paul Heartfield of the X-Ray Audio Project at London's PUSHKIN HOUSE in a special evening ahead of the opening of their exhibition Bone Music at Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow.
They will be joined by a very special music guest.
TICKETS HERE
Stephen will tell the astonishing and haunting story of the Soviet bootleggers with words, images and film followed by a demonstration of the incredible art of cutting music to an x-ray from a special live performance using a 1950s recording lathe.
Read Stephen's Blog on the event HERE
We will be holding a special event on July 27th at PUSHKIN HOUSE the Russian Cultural centre in London. Stephen Coates will tell the amazing and haunted story of the Soviet x-ray bootleggers followed by a demonstration of how to cut music onto an x-ray from a live musical performance with a vintage 1950s recording lathe
Very special music guest to be announced.
Details HERE
We wil be live at the HOUSE OF CULTURE in Berlin as part for the FREE! Music festival on Sunday April 9th:
"Stephen Coates tells the incredible story of soviet bootleggers who cut forbidden music onto used X-ray plates during the Cold War. Sound artist Aleks Kolkowski cuts a fresh X-ray bootleg live."
We are very pleased to be working with the Berlin electronic musical artist GUIDO MOBIUS to make a recording onto X-Ray
DETAILS HERE
ROENTGENIZDAT the X-Ray Audio documentary will be screened during the 28th Trieste Film Festival to be held from 20 to 29 January 2017. It will be accompanied by an X-Ray Audio exhibition of original bone disc, films, sounds, ephemera and images
The screening on 21st January will be accompanied by a live event with Q+A and live x-ray cutting from a very special musical performance by a guest star performer.
For more details go HERE
