AIGEL

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 and was banned in
Russia, and left the country. 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. 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 long plays, and dropped 11 music videos, 8 of which
amassed over a million views and 2 of which went viral.