Strange Attractor Press, ISBN 978-1907222476, English, 156 pages, 2023, UK

The use of X-ray film to record music in Russia before 1989 has emerged in the last couple of decades, with mesmerising images of grooves cut on used scans of bones. Stephen Coates first encountered this particular medium at a flea market in St Petersburg, and since then he has researched this obscure scene extensively. After a website, a documentary film and an exhibition, he expanded the first book (“X–Ray Audio”) to include research into protagonists and stories. Over the years, he has conducted numerous interviews and conversations to reconstruct the social and technical history of the so-called “bonecutters”. These anti-prohibition bootleggers had to compete between customers and potential prosecutors and often built their own recording lathes. This illegal business came to an end in the 1960s when the first reel-to-reel tape recorders came onto the market. Understanding this black market, on which cultural assets were sold, in its entire production chain has a medial and historical value. In fact, it contributes to music history on the one hand and media history on the other. The specific DIY character and the illegal aspects (the X-Ray devices were often stolen from hospitals) contribute to the ethnographic aspects, which can be seen even more clearly on the accompanying website [1] with numerous images and digitised examples of X–Ray records.

 

Stephen Coates – Bone Music: Soviet X-Ray Audio