Aikakone

Aikakone (means time machine in Finnish) is a dance/pop project with 4 members : Sani, Vera, Alex and Maki. Sani (real name : Saija Aartela) , the main female vocalist, was born June 8th, 1971. She has brown hair and green eyes. Vera (background vocalist, lyrics writer), was born in October 1971. She attended the University of Jyväskylä. She is blonde-haired. Alex (musician, background vocalist, English lyrics writer). Alex is the male singer. His role as a singer diminished over time as he got more involved into the instrumental music aspect of the band. He was born in San Jose, Costa Rica on the 13th of July and speaks Spanish fluently : he wrote the song El Sol from the Maa album. Maki is the composer and producer of the group. He is no newcomer in the music business, since he had already produced many groups before. He plays the guitar. They released 3 albums in Finnish language : Tähtikaaren taa in 1995, Toiseen Maailmaan in 1996 and Maa in 1998. Their music was simply wonderful with intelligent lyrics and superb vocal harmonies. The only thing that prevented Aikakone from huge international success was that they sang in their native language of Finnish. Later, they changed their name to Aika to reflect the language change from Finnish to English. Under this new name, they released 2 other albums : Time (A special internet-only EP, 1997) and Hear Me Now (2001). 2002 : Aika took par to the Eurovision song contest.