The electronic duo AIGEL was founded in 2016 by Tatar singer-songwriter Aigel Gaisina from Kazan (Tatarstan) and music producer Ilya Baramiia from Saint Petersburg. After the full-scale invasion in 2022, the band made an anti-war statement, was banned in Russia, and left the country. Currently, Aigel Gaisina is based in Berlin, while Ilya resides in Montenegro. The duo creates and performs in Russian, Tatar, and English languages.
The band’s debut album, “1190,” was released in 2017, addressing issues of judgment and the prison system in Russia. The album received significant attention in Russia. In the same year AIGEL performed on the late-night show “Evening Urgant” on Channel One, Russia’s main TV channel. The song “Tatarin” from this album went viral, with its music video garnering over 118 million views on YouTube and receiving the Berlin Music Awards.
The music video for the song “You’re Born” was released two days after Putin’s presidential terms were ‘zeroed out’ in 2020. The video depicts an old figure of authority becoming young through a Christian ritual of diving into an ice-hole. The video was considered prophetic and gained huge media attention, earning the Silver Lion at the Cannes Lions festival and winning over 15 awards at festivals worldwide, including the Berlin Music Awards.
In autumn 2023, the band’s song “Piyala” written in tatar language reached the top spot on the global Shazam chart, as well as 1-st places on the Apple Music and Spotify top-100 charts in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan. It also ranked 11th in the Billboard TikTok top-100. The music video for “Piyala” reached 40 million views within 4 months.
From 2017 to 2024, the band produced over 30 music releases, including 5 longplays, and dropped 11 music videos, 8 of which amassed over a million views and 2 of which went viral. AIGEL performs in Europe and Asia and participates in music festivals such as Exit Festival (Serbia), Pohoda Festival (Slovakia), Tallinn Music Week, and Red Square Festival (Berlin) etc.
