Bureau of Lost Culture
Episodes

Jan 30, 2022
A Soundtrack for a City
Jan 30, 2022
Jan 30, 2022
54 min
The last violet seller in Piccadilly Circus, the Canvey Island Oil refinery, the bascule chamber of Tower Bridge, the song of The Muffin Man. In the twelve years before his early death in 2021, Ian Rawes engaged in a Quixotic endeavour to capture - and collect - the sound of London.
With over 2000 field recordings, historical audio pieces, sound maps, writings and images, The London Sound Survey he created is an idiosyncratic but wonderfully accessible, evocative and often arresting series of sonic snapshots that aim to track a changing city.
Tony Herrington of The Wire magazine comes to the Bureau to remember Ian and celebrate his work. We hear various selections from the Sound Survey and talk counterculture, field-recording, bells, anarcho-punk activism - and of course, independent music publishing, along the way.
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The London Sound Survey Website
Tony's obituary for Ian
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We'd love to hear from you.-------------
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If you can contribute to this crazy endeavour, join our Patreon HERE
Thank you to everyone who’s signed up to support the show —that means a lot. We have chosen not to carry ads here; it simply wouldn’t sit right with the spirit of the Bureau. But that does mean we can benefit from your support, in whatever form that takes, not just financial.
Stephen

Jan 18, 2022
The Lives and Times of Michael Moorcock - Part 1
Jan 18, 2022
Jan 18, 2022
59 min
Multi-award winning writer, musician, editor, essayist and inventor of the multiverse, Michael Moorcock, beams into the Bureau for the first episode exploring his deeply countercultural life in literature and London
It’s an action-packed hour involving The Beats, William Burroughs, Soho, J G Ballard, Tarzan, Conan the Barbarian, anarchists, a Rolls Royce, myth, skiffle, fanzines, comics and books, books books.
We hear how a precocious teenage Michael sets out on a career that led to the writing of over a hundred books and the creation of the well-loved characters including Elric and Jerry Cornelius who inhabit them, and we hear a revelation that will surprise even die-hard Moorcock afficionados..
For more on Michael
http://www.multiverse.org
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Get the Bureau's Newsletter
Support our wild endeavours
The Bureau of Lost Culture Home
Go on - follow, rate and review us - or be in touch directlybureauoflostculture@gmail.com
We'd love to hear from you.-------------
---
If you can contribute to this crazy endeavour, join our Patreon HERE
Thank you to everyone who’s signed up to support the show —that means a lot. We have chosen not to carry ads here; it simply wouldn’t sit right with the spirit of the Bureau. But that does mean we can benefit from your support, in whatever form that takes, not just financial.
Stephen

Jan 2, 2022
The Lost World of The Self-Made Record
Jan 2, 2022
Jan 2, 2022
1hr
We revisit the wonderfully odd, lost culture of the coin-operated machines that allowed ordinary people to make a record of their voice long before the advent of tape or digital recording.(Jack White has been using one, The Voice O Graph, more recently to produce terrific lo- fi caught-in-the-moment records, including an album with Neil Young).
We are joined by oral historian and broadcaster Alan Dein to hear a selection of recordings of strange, moving ghostly voices from his collection and learn how the records were used to send messages home from the war, record visits to tourist destinations or to capture the sounds of loved ones in a way that had never been possible before.
For more on Alan’s award winning work
https://www.facebook.com/alan.dein
----------
Get the Bureau's Newsletter
Support our wild endeavours
The Bureau of Lost Culture Home
Go on - follow, rate and review us - or be in touch directlybureauoflostculture@gmail.com
We'd love to hear from you.-------------
---
If you can contribute to this crazy endeavour, join our Patreon HERE
Thank you to everyone who’s signed up to support the show —that means a lot. We have chosen not to carry ads here; it simply wouldn’t sit right with the spirit of the Bureau. But that does mean we can benefit from your support, in whatever form that takes, not just financial.
Stephen
Image courtesy Museum of London