
*The Bureau of Lost Culture broadcast curious, rare, half-forgotten, half-remembered countercultural stories, oral histories and tales from the underground. *Join host Stephen Coates and a wide range of guests including musicians, writers and cultural commentators like Billy Bragg, Lisa Law, Michael Moorcock, Alan Moore, Jill Drower and Johnny Marr in conversation. *Listen live on Saturdays at 9.00am on London’s premier independent station Soho Radio or via catch-up on all major podcast providers: *The Bureau is now collected at The British Library Sound Archive
Episodes

Sunday Dec 04, 2022
Roentgenizdat - The Hidden History of Bone Music
Sunday Dec 04, 2022
Sunday Dec 04, 2022


Monday Sep 12, 2022
Smells Like Teen Spirit
Monday Sep 12, 2022
Monday Sep 12, 2022


Monday Feb 01, 2021
Soviet Hippies
Monday Feb 01, 2021
Monday Feb 01, 2021
Forget California, swinging sixties London or the Paris riots for a moment, Estonian filmmaker Terje Toomistu joins us to talk about the hippie movement of the Soviet Union.
It had all the characteristics of Western hippiedom: long hair, groovy music, esoteric spirituality and drugs. The only thing missing perhaps was the radical public politics that would have pushed the repressive Soviet authorities into drastic, brutal action
Terji’s film, with its super groovy soundtrack of rare tunes, provides a fascinating glimpse into a moving, daring subculture that flourished east of the Iron Curtain.
More about the Soviet Hippies film and Terje www.soviethippies.com
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Monday Sep 14, 2020
The History of the Self - Made Record
Monday Sep 14, 2020
Monday Sep 14, 2020
We are joined by oral historian and broadcaster Alan Dein.
We discuss the history, culture and technology of the coin-operated machines that allowed ordinary people to make a record of themselves in the West (and, in adapted bootlegged form, to create records of forbidden music in the Soviet Union) long before the advent of tape or digital recording.
We hear a selection of extraordinary recordings of strange, moving voices from Alan’s 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.
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Monday Sep 14, 2020
The Soviet 'Punk Frank Zappa'
Monday Sep 14, 2020
Monday Sep 14, 2020
We meet with film director Olivia Litchenstein and BBC Russian Arts presenter Alexander Kan to hear about the extraordinary musician Sergey Kuryokhin, ‘the Soviet Punk Frank Zappa’ who with his underground cohorts in Leningrad tried to soundtrack perestroika as the cold war crumbled around them.
Olivia tells of the strange circumstances of the making of the BBC TV series Comrades during the twilight of the Soviet Empire, with tales of tapes smuggled in diplomatic bags and a bizarre intervention by Ronald Reagan.
Alex tells of his friendship with Kuryokhin, an incredibly talented, charming musical provocateur whose live performances astonished Russian audiences. And we learn of the bizarre prank Kuryokhin played on National TV claiming Lenin was a magic mushroom, just one of many dadaist interventions he made before his tragically early death.
The Comrades program featuring Sergey Kuryokhin: https://youtu.be/ibY2lXdgdnM
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Monday Sep 14, 2020
The Invisible Battle of the Cold War Airwaves
Monday Sep 14, 2020
Monday Sep 14, 2020
This Episode explore three stories of cold war era radio in the USSR: Soviet Radio Jammers, the Russian ‘Woodpecker’ and the Soviet Radio Hooligans
We meet with Russian broadcaster Vladimir Raevsky to talk about radio jamming in cold war era Soviet Union.
As East and West super powers square up to each with nuclear weapons, a parallel invisible war is being fought in the airwaves.
Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on broadcasting propaganda and music into the Soviet Union - and on attempting to block them from being heard.
Stephen tells the strange story of the ‘Russian Woodpecker’, a dystopian broadcasting station near the Chernobyl nuclear reactor and alleged attempts to brainwash the West using radar.
BBC Russian Arts correspondant Alex Kan, sits in a London cafe and tells of the brave young ‘Radio hooligans' who broadcast their own individual pirate radio shows during his youth in the USSR.
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