Echo – ‘the magazine you play on your phonograph’ – was first published in 1959 and came with 5 or 6 flexi discs fixed inside each issue, mostly containing music and interviews with the subjects profiled within. The ring-binder design let each page fold back under the last and a spindle hole through the centre meant that you could place the whole magazine on the turntable to play each disc.
An 8″ x 8″ quarterly publication that ran for at least 4 issues as far as I can tell (of which this is #3), it had beautiful page layouts courtesy of Designers’ Collaborative from New York and United Artists served as the agent supplying the entertainment talent. This one features music and interviews with The Trapp Family / Mary Martin / Brigitte Bardot / France Nuyen / Eva Gabor / Siobahn McKenna / Brendan Behan / a Shelley Berman monologue / an interview with The Kingston Trio / Fiorello La Guardia reads the comics and an advert for Springmaid Fabrics.
 
There are some extracts from the discs over on WFMU’s excellent 365 Days Project entry by Katya Oddie for the same issue. Here’s the cover for #2 – pretty advanced design for 1959 – if anyone has any of the other issues that they’d like to sell then I’m interested.

It’s been a while since we’ve had a guest post in the Flexibition and we celebrate the half way mark with Jonny Trunk, someone who should be no stranger to readers of this blog. We start a run of flexi’s given away with magazines with a minor classic of the genre and a treasure trove of sample material, I’ll let Jonny give you the lowdown:

“The Practical Electronics flexi by F.C.Judd (F. C. for Frederick Charles) was only available once, with the magazine’s October 1967 issue. F.C. Judd was a regular writer for PE and other home electronic titles and this comes four years after his own Castle Electronic Music 7” series.

Although issued together, it’s hard to find the magazine and the flexi together these days. If I recall I found the flexi first in an old brown paper bag at Spitalfields market a few years ago. Cost a couple of quid. I found the bag in a box that had come to the market via a North London auction house. The magazine I tracked down a couple of weeks later through a mag dealer. Again a couple of quid.

The PE ‘Electronic Sounds And Effects For Electronic Music‘ record is one-sided and contains a basic introduction to electronic sounds and electronic music generation – all introduced in fairly serious, dry announcements:” (reminiscent of Peter Cook‘s E.L. Whisty character if you ask me – Kev)

Basic Sound Sources
Pure sine wave, square wave, pulse wave from mulitvibrator, Unfiltered white noise

Electronic Treatment
Ring modulated tones, filtered white noise, pulsed tones, attack and decay

Reverberation Effects
Mechanical reverberation, tape echo, excessive echo, pre-echo

Tape Recording Techniques
Replay speed, replay speed doubled, reversed recording, tape loops

Rhythmic Electronic Music
A specially composed short cue for this disc, utlising a melody for which F.C. Judd was awarded first prize in the 1965 British Recording Contest (professional section).

Judd was an early electronics pioneer (still largely unknown next to his Radiophonic Workshop peers) who contributed the music to the British puppet TV show, ‘Space Patrol’ and, as Jonny stated, released several 7″s of electronic music and sound FX on the Castle label. He also wrote several books including, ‘Electronics in Music’, which was reprinted in 2012.