Electrecord Fotodisc

As this article gets updated, you can see the new content added at the bottom. For now, enjoy Part Two!

The flexi disc (also known as a phonosheet, Sonosheet or Soundsheet) is a phonograph record made of a thin, flexible vinyl sheet with a molded-in spiral stylus groove, and is designed to be playable on a normal phonograph turntable.

Flexible records were commercially introduced as the Eva-tone Soundsheet in 1962. They were very popular among children and teenagers and mass-produced by the state publisher in the Soviet government.

Flexi discs were mass-produced from 1964 to 1991 by the Soviet government as inserts in the popular Krugozor magazine for teens. The appearance of the Soviet flexi disc was always the same, vivid blue, and the discs are familiar to virtually anyone who grew up in the Soviet Union and even the post-Soviet era. In 1969 in addition to the successful audio-magazine Krugozor, the government also launched the audio-magazine for children Kolobok, which also contained flexi disks.

Because of a shortage of vinyl recording material (and official censorship of some Western music) during the Soviet era, bootleg recordings known as Ribs, Bones or roentgenizdat were produced on discarded medical X-ray prints. More about them on Wikipedia

In Romania, the national record label Electrecord manufactured flexi discs in the postcard format, called “Photodiscs”, in the late 1950s and into the following decade. The Electrecord photodiscs were designed like postcards – one side was containing a color photograph of a tourist attraction in the country and the recording, while the other side contained a few explanatory words about the photograph and the recording, with space for the sender to write something. They used to have nice envelopes as well, but I wasn’t able to find one. Because their size is not standard, somewhere around 170x140 mm to 200x160 mm, I got some brown C5 envelopes that look “vitingi"(sic!) enough. But because they are still quite large, I decided to use my Lettera to type a “playlist” on an envelope and put all my photodiscs inside.

The photodiscs represented the “F” series of the Electrecord catalog (catalog numbers contained the prefix ECF, EDF or EPF), depending on their content. C was “cult” music (classical and derivatives), D was “diverse” music (miscellaneous: latin, jazz, pop, rock, funk etc), and P was “popular” (folklore and derivatives).

I managed to get 14 of them and they are really fun. Three of them are duplicates, so I’m either gonna keep them for swaps or give them for Xmas.

I’ve set up a fairly new Sony turntable (which has an USB capture device) and recorded each of the photodiscs using Audacity in a single recording+playback session, then cut the wav file into tracks using Magic Cutter. The resulting tracks were then converted to 128kbps MP3 format with no additional processing (no noise reduction, no post-processing) and uploaded to the site. You can find each of them below, next to each of the photos.

The sound quality is not great, but it’s still a cool upgrade of the classical postcard. Because of the age of the cards, but more because of the limitations of the format (very shallow grooves), prone to scuffs and bumps, they are fairly playable, but the quality is nothing to write home. Despite their state and age (over 60 years old!!), out of the 11 fotodiscs I recorded, eight played through from start to finish, only three needed “manual adjustment” because they kept skipping because of old wear, bends and scuffs. I call that a win.

Enjoy below the list of the fotodiscs, the audio of them, some information and photos. The images were taken from discogs, but you can also see the photographs of my fotodiscs in the gallery at the end of the post.

PS: I just realized I synchronized this post with Record Store Day 2023. Keep vinyl alive, keep small shops alive!

Part Two

May 2023

Because I managed to get a second batch of these photodiscs, I will not create an in-depth post about them, only one that will feature the new photos and the new additions to the collection. You can also find there the recording of these new discs posted separately, but you can find them below as well, in chronological order, mixed with the existing ones.

The list contains the following fotodiscs:

EPF.21 (Unknown Artist - Hora Furtună)
ECF 46 (Constantin Drăghici - Cînta O Mandolină)
EPF 52 (Orchestra Nicu Stănescu, Voce: Maria Lătărețu - Oltule Voinicule)
EPF 53 (Orchestra Ionel Budișteanu, Voce: Alexandru Grozuță - Pe Murăș Și Pe Tîrnavă)
EPF 55 (Orchestra Nicușor Predescu, Voce: Ioana Radu - Primăvara)
EPF 56 (Orchestra Nicușor Predescu, Voce: Ioana Radu - Dacă-n Douăzeci De Toamne)
EPF 57 (Orchestra Nicușor Predescu, Voce: Maria Tănase - Cîntec Din Oaș)
EDF 59 (Trio „Do-Re-Mi“ - Troleibuzul De Mamaia)
EPF 61 (Orchestra Nicu Stănescu, Voce: Vlad Dionisie - Învîrtita Din Sibiu)
EPF 63 (Orchestra George Vancu, Voce: Victoria Darvai - Măi Bădiță Floare-aleasă)

If you want to see only the new stuff, check this other post.

Unfortunately, disc EPF 63 has some pretty bad scratches and I was unable to do a proper start to finish recording, but one might be coming soon, when I’ll properly clean the disc and maybe do some audio editing magic.

Part Three

January 2025

If you want to see only the new additions, check the “Part Three” of the series.

I got another two nice fotodiscs from Germany. These are really nice because they have the original envelopes, albeit in a very bad state, but they still have the addresses of the sender and the receiver written of them from when they were sent back in the day. They also have 2 Lei stamps and a post stampmark dated 17.9.65. These records are ECF 47 (Margareta Pîslaru – Cum E Oare?) and ECF 50 (Aurelian Andreescu – În Tot Ce E Frumos Pe Lume).

I found another 3 ones that I didn’t already have at my friend, Bogdan and these are nice additions to the collection:

EDF 10 (Unknown Artist – Val De Argint)
EPF 54 (Orchestra de muzică populară a Radioteleviziunii. Dirijor: Radu Voinescu, Voce: Lucreția Ciobanu – Pe Izvor, Pe Izvoraș)
EPF 65 (Orchestra Radioteleviziunii. Dirijor: Victor Predescu, Voce: Maria Cornescu – Hăulita Gorjenească)

As I changed my ripping equipment from the Sony PSPS-LX300USB to an Audio-Technica AT-LP60X which doesn’t have USB connectivity, I had to use the M-Audio -Track 2X2M that I received as a prize at the SupportYourLocalBands Music Festival, back in 2018.

Unfortunately, apart from the bad sound quality specific to the medium, the age of some of these records shows and some of them couldn’t be recorded properly, loud cracks and pops can be heard throughout the entire recordings and in some place it makes the song barely listenable, like EPF 10. Some other records have some bad skips, like the end of ECF 50.

I also did try to re-record EPF 63 from the previous set, but that’s skipping in a few places, so it can’t be properly recording. I added a recording from the official Electrecord Youtube channel, which is their digitization of a master tape.

On February 13 I managed to get another photodisc, ECF 44, Margareta Pîslaru – Chemarea Mării. I recorded it and added to this article, and I can say it’s pretty poppy, in all the word’s meanings.

I’ve noticed that not all of the have been found and added to the discogs database, some are still a mystery. Additionally, there are some releases that have been discovered, but have no catalog number. It also doesn’t help that some releases while bearing the same catalog number, will have different front photographs. I will try to keep this list as updated as possible. Green means I have it, red means it’s not found and gray means I haven’t acquired yet.

1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	N/A (3e)
EPF.1	EDF.2	EDF.3	EDF.4	EDF.5	E?F 6	EDF.7	EDF.8	E?F 9	EDF.10
EDF.11	EPF.12	E?F 13	EPF.14	E?F 15	EPF 16	EPF.17	EDF.18	EDF.19	EPF.20
EPF.21	EXF 22	E?F 23	E?F 24	E?F 25	E?F 26	EDF 27	EDF 28	EDP 29	E?F 30
E?F 31	EDF 32	E?F 33	E?F 34	E?F 35	ECF 36	EPF 37	E?F 38	E?F 39	EXF 40
E?F 41	E?F 42	E?F 43	ECF 44	ECF 45	ECF 46	ECF 47	E?F 48	E?F 49	ECF 50
ECF 51	EPF 52	EPF 53	EPF 54	EPF 55	EPF 56	EPF 57	EDF 58	EDF 59	EDF 60
EPF 61	E?F 62	EPF 63	EPF 64	EPF 65	EPF 66	EPF 67	EDF 68	EPF 69