Agent: Antti Hietala / antti@wejazz.fi / +358 44 560 8969
Sumuposauttaja is Sami Aleksi Keinänen. In 2026, the first album by Sumuposauttaja Band, Work & Play, will be released. Sumuposauttaja performs alone with guitar/synth, looper and vocals, or with his four-piece Band consisting of a saxophonist, bassist and drummer in addition to Keinänen. Sumuposauttaja’s shows are everything between adventurous danceability and dreamlike drifting, often both. Somewhere between dream and reality. You can hear echoes of the musical worlds of The Space Lady, Daft Punk, Mark Hollis and Sade.
In an era of hollow simulation, Work and Play arrives as a document of breath, wood, and skin. Recorded between 2024 and 2025, the album finds Sami Aleksi Keinänen trading the synthesized lo-fi nostalgia of his earlier work for a sprawling, organic live sound. Anchored by the battered resonance of his father’s old Landola acoustic guitar, Keinänen leads an expansive eleven-member ensemble – including mainstay Tampere jazz cats, the percussionists of the afrobeat/fusion band Maajo, and a three-piece vocal choir – through six tracks of playful rhythmic explorations. It is a soulful testament of the power of the collective, where the loose-limbed spirit of jazz meets the rhythmic sensibilities of West African pop and the polished melodies of late-80s sophisti-pop.