DESCRIPTION:
Tsuumi Sound System emerged alongside Tsuumi, a contemporary dance company. Founded in 1998, it has since become one of Finland's internationally most notable modern folk music bands. It still works with the dance company that gave it birth, but it is no longer merely their appendage or backup band.

Over the years, the band have gone through a number of changes, but by the time of their fifth studio album, Hotas (2007), their lineup had crystallised into eight members, and the name Tsuumi Sound System became established (earlier albums were released under the name Tsuumi). The band have themselves noted that this should be regarded as their début disc, because it was here that they established their ideal form. Their second disc in this guise, Growing Up, was released in summer 2009. With Hotas and Growing Up, the band actually acquired a ninth important member: producer Roger Tallroth, a super-name in Swedish folk music who plays for instance with the Väsen band.

The combination works well, as both of the aforementioned CDs have racked up an impressive number of stars in record reviews around the world. Songlines magazine put Hotas on the Top of the World list in January 2008, and the critic declared "modestly" that the disc is perfect.

Tsuumi Sound System is an urban folk music combo whose broad yet fresh sound presents the unusual combination of solid accordion and bass on the one hand and bright and airy sax, guitar, cittern and piano on the other, not to speak of the dextrous fiddles. A drum kit and percussionist keep up the crisp beat. The music is not so very far away from traditional Finnish pelimanni music, but it fits the definition of modern world music very well too. Foreign listeners tend to identify something northern in the lucid sound, but Celtic and rock influences have also been detected, much to the band's surprise.