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FNR-333

Misha Panfilov “Where The Birds Fly” LP

Tip-On Jacket

A1: Full of Life

A2: Luminous

A3: When I See You (It Feels Wonderful) 

B1: New Day

B2: Away We Drove

B3: Guided by the Wind

When I first heard Where The Birds Fly, I was stretched out on a park bench. It was midday. Misha’s swirling compositions blew through my headphones as warm wind gusts blew through my hair. The bright green leaves of a ginkgo tree danced and flickered over my shoulder. Flower petals shook in a nearby garden — purples and pinks, reds and yellows. Soil-rooted stems bounced back and forth. Clouds whipped by overhead, casting quick shadows across a playscape brimming with children. The wind and the music seemed to meld, holding the same

subtle dominance over the scene, enlivening everything – full of life.

If you listen closely to Misha Panfilov’s latest record, you will hear the sounds of wind propelling the music forward. A natural force breathing momentum into every aspect of these journeying compositions. As if the layered blend of dreamy woodwinds, elastic lapsteel guitar twang, thumping drums, twinkling keys, pulsing electric organ, and wordless vocal runs remain always in motion, open to breezy spontaneity, shapeshifting like the clouds caught up in Earth’s unbothered rotations.

As I listen, fixated on the cover art — the bearded wizard with wavy star-stirring fingers — I’m reminded of Aeolus, the Odyssey’s divine keeper of winds, the Zeus-appointed king who dwells with his family on a mythical floating island. In Homer’s ancient epic, Aeolus entraps all stormy gusts within tied burlap sacks, blessing Odysseus and his crew with the chance to ride a favorable zephyr homeward. Of course, that’s not how the story unfolds. The men, driven by

greed, rip open the bags, unleash the gusts, and are blasted backwards, to Aeolia.

But we are not them. Instead of seeking a specified homeland, I like to imagine us — a blessed bunch of scraggly seafaring audiophiles — sailing through the vast sonic universe Misha has been constructing over the course of a decade, allowing the dynamic winds — both blustery and mellow, howling and soft — to take us wherever the wizard chooses.

“Every composition feels like a surprise to me,” Misha once told me. “I often leave a lot of room for chance, sometimes starting with whatever I happen to have around me that day. If my music

stops surprising me, it stops being fun. The final result almost never sounds the way I originally imagined it and that’s a great thing.”

In other words, sometimes it’s better to be blown off course, if only to find your way back again.

All I ask is that you slide Where The Birds Fly from its protective shell, place it gently down on your turntable, press Play, watch the needle sink into the vinyl’s outermost groove, and bask in that first snippet of crackling static. Think of wind. How it moves, its unpredictability; how it feels, a cool breeze washing over your body; and how it’s created, from pressure, from the cosmic fireball we call the sun.

Listen closely.

Accept your destination as unfixed, uncharted, and unexplainable.

Guided by the wind.

— Colin Kirkland  

Music by Misha Panfilov

Recorded January - April, 2026

Flute, tenor saxophone, clarinet, Ilja Gussarov

Drums, Leonid Galaganov

Tenor saxophone, Sasha Petrov

Vocals, Anna Dotsenko

Vibraphone, Volodja Brodsky

Guitar, cello (6), Tomo Katsurada

Pedal Steel (4), Joe Harvey-Whyte

Piano, guitar, lap steel guitar, bass, six-string tic-tac bass, organ, harmonium, Mellotron, percussion, vocals, white noise, mixing, production, Misha Panfilov

Front cover ilustration by Nathan Hardyman

Layout by Ilja Tulit

Mastering by Jukka Sarapää  

© all rights reserved

Fans outside of USA may want to check www.mpsc.bandcamp.com for cheaper shipping rates.