YOU could say Soviet-era hipsters had music in their bones. Ghostly bootleg records made from repurposed X-ray plates offer a glimpse into the counterculture movement whose members were prepared to risk imprisonment for rock 鈥榥鈥� roll.
Music was strictly censored in the USSR. Only classical or patriotic tunes were deemed ideologically acceptable 鈥� you could be arrested for listening to Western music or even traditional folk tunes. But in the 1950s, a handful of music fans in Leningrad (now St Petersburg) began to defy the state. Before long, an underground cottage industry in home-made records had sprung up.
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Unable to get hold of vinyl, the audio dissidents used home-made lathes to press recordings onto X-ray plates salvaged from hospitals. The records were then cut into circles with scissors and the central hole burnt with a cigarette. By the 1960s, Roentgenizdat (bone records) could be found on the black market in every Russian city. 鈥淭hey were made by ordinary people,鈥� says Stephen Coates, whose book tells the story of this contraband music. 鈥淧eople ended up in prison for this.鈥�
The discs will be in London until 19 December. You can listen to some of the recordings at .
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淏one collectors鈥�
