The X-Ray Audio Project: The Incredible Story of Bootleg Technology, Cold War Culture and Human Endeavor

A Live, Illustrated Zoom Lecture with Musician and Author Stephen Coates

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“They are images of pain and damage overlaid with the sounds of pleasure, fragile photographs of the interiors of Soviet citizens inscribed with the music they secretly loved, skin-thin slivers of DIY punk protest”

Leningrad 1946: huge amounts of music have been censored by the Soviet state including Western Rock ’n’ roll and Jazz and forbidden Russian songs.

But music-mad bootleggers have come up with an amazingly ingenious way to defy the censor by making and distributing their own records. But to do so they have to risk their freedom and build their own recording machines out of sight of a brutal regime. And what do they use as the materials for the records? X-ray film secretly obtained from hospitals after dark.

Tonight join musician Stephen Coates—the man behind The Real Tuesday Weld and the book X-Ray Audio: The Strange Story of Soviet Music on the Bone—to learn the fascinating story of what they did, the extraordinary lengths they went to and of the ghostly records they made, asking ‘what would WE risk for the sake of the music we love?’

Stephen Coates is a musician, producer and broadcaster. He has released six albums and toured internationally as The Real Tuesday Weld and written music for many films, documentaries, animations and art installations. He has written and presented radio documentaries for BBC, Resonance FM and Soho Radio. His label Antique Beat have curated cultural events for arts institutions including Tate Modern, V+A, Wellcome Collection, BFI, Royal Parks, and the London Eye.

With X-Ray Audio, he has curated exhibitions internationally including shows at Tel Aviv Museum of Art, GARAGE Museum of Contemporary Art Moscow, New Hollandia St Petersburg, The Horse Hospital London and Ba-Tsu Gallery Tokyo.

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