If you’ve been following Alex’s excellent Instagram posts, you know that last month we focused on flexidiscs and paper recordings, and in August we are exploring the outer reaches of space from inside a space helmet. Well, lo and behold, we came across this Russian flexidisc magazine with a helmet-head on the cover!

This gem (#9, from the first year of publication, 1964) is one of thirty volumes of the Russian audio magazine Кругозор (”Krogozor” meaning “Horizon”), that snuck into this country hidden in a shipment of Hillbilly 78s. Horizon is a complete surprise of great graphics, agitprop and a sprinkling of white, unmarked, doublesided 33 1/3 rpm flexidiscs throughout. Cosmonauts are go, Russia is great, Comrads are happy – the discs, some in English, make you want to vacation in Rostov-on-Don. Well it makes me want to collect them all.

The editor opens with “Hello, my friends!” “We are together again,” then chimes Horizon is, “the voice of our biography.” Proof of this story-song-propaganda of continuity is the closing poem; “Blow, bugles, the tattoo at the dawn, for astronauts and Cavalry soldiers.” Georgy Sviridov sings, “The Songs of my Childhood.” and tears fill our eyes.

Read more at this amazing webthing – the very reason the Internet was invented – http://www.krugozor-kolobok.ru/