[From Up North]
It’s not a rare thing to be into back catalogue music. To bring it closer to the wider audience, however, is a noteworthy mission. As with every totalitarian regime, there’s mysticism in what went on behind the Iron Curtain. A music man in his own right, Misha Panfilov diffuses some of the misconceptions using a YouTube channel Funked Up East dedicated to the funky universe of sounds from the Soviet Union.
As a recovering vinyl junkie, he’s more selective than ever in what he buys and shares with his rapidly growing subscribers on Youtube. So when Misha isn’t working on the Estonian jazz-funk band Estrada Orchestra, or composing library music for a yet unreleased movie, he uses the time to dig around, rip and upload. In the following interview we touch on this positive addiction, on the legendary Russian record label Melodiya, the reissue culture and talk about life in the USSR in general.
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