Killer Qız marks a major milestone in your journey. What was the driving force behind this album, and how does it reflect where you are as artists today?
Aigel Gaisina: This is our first full-length album in five years. We had a lot of material stored up—we released some of it as singles over time, but overall we were in a kind of silence mode, which is unusual for us—we used to release albums every year. During that break, there was the pandemic, the war, emigration. I moved—first to Turkey, then to Berlin. There was a very difficult adaptation process for my teenage child in a German school, and a partial abandonment of the concept of “home” as such. I feel like we’ve become completely cosmopolitan internally. As a Tatar who had already gone through assimilation and developed a mixed identity—absorbing both Tatar and Russian cultures—I felt after moving that continuing to blend with German, Turkish, or any other culture is not a loss, but a gain. We even have a song in German now, and writing in it was pure joy.
Ilya Baramia: The milestone is simply that we managed to record and submit an album after a five-year break. In 2022, after the full-scale invasion began, Aigel said many times that she couldn’t write songs and was afraid she never would again. I’m older, I’ve lived through different kinds of creative crises, and I kept telling her: don’t rush, breathe, don’t overthink—it will come back. And it did. It’s hard to put the driving force into words—we’re musicians, and our music is a natural, almost reflexive reaction to reality. We don’t invent concepts—we just create when it happens, and only later do we look back and see what it all meant. One clear desire this time was to make music that pulses and pushes forward—something danceable, in a sense. Most of the early drafts were slow, emotional ballads—but we wanted to inject them with dance beats, sometimes even aggressive ones. Not to dive into melancholy, but to hit the dancefloor instead.
This is your second album entirely in Tatar. Was returning to your native language a conscious decision, or did it just feel like the most natural way to express what you wanted to say?
Aigel Gaisina: I love my native language—it’s healing for me. In emigration, for some reason, your first identity becomes more tangible. I’ve talked to many Tatars who grew up mostly within Russian culture and hardly spoke Tatar, but once abroad, they began remembering the language and reviving family traditions. I guess it’s a grounding practice—when you leave, your home stays inside you, and you recreate it through rituals, through the language of your grandparents. But in general, I never consciously decide which of my native languages to write in. Songs just come in whatever language flows at that moment. We’ve had Tatar songs even on our Russian-language albums—it’s never been about sticking to a rule.
Ilya Baramia: I don’t care which language I’m working with. 90% of the music I’ve listened to and still listen to is not in Russian—English, French, Italian, German, Spanish. Emotion translates. Music is a universal language. Aigel is a very good poet—I trust her words no matter what language she writes in. The first language that woke up in her after the break was Tatar, so that’s where we started.
The album tells a gripping story about a DJ killer escaping the country. What inspired this concept, and how does it tie into the themes of loss, rebirth, and human nature?
Aigel Gaisina: That song is more like a joke, a child’s fantasy about how amazing it would be if the people who don’t know how to live among others—those who suppress, destroy, impose their will, roll over human lives without shame—would just get off the dancefloor of our lives. The country we left has always had serious problems with power and respect for individuals. But my generation grew up during a 20-year window where, even if life was hard, the state didn’t dare climb into your soul and force you to think and speak in a certain way—or dictate what music you were allowed to listen to.
Our concerts, along with those of many of our musician friends, are now banned in Russia. Some officials have decided they get to choose what people are allowed to hear. It’s arrogant and rude—not surprising, but infuriating. As our recent shows proved, a touch of dark, blood-tinged humor can work like a bit of antidote—dancing to a track where normal people defeat the madness of power-drunk officials and justice triumphs, even just in a song—that’s fun.
Ilya Baramia: I love when Aigel writes funny, punchy verses. And there’s always a depth to them that squeezes your heart. My main job is to catch and hold that feeling—that’s when the songs really land.
One of the most haunting moments on the album is the child’s voice shifting from Tatar to German in real time. How did that idea come about, and what does it say about cultural identity and assimilation?
Aigel Gaisina: The idea came up by accident. Initially, we just wanted to add voices of Tatar children who had emigrated—let them say a few words about what “home” means to them and how they’re experiencing emigration. One of the girls, Alsu, turned out to be incredibly talkative and funny, and I suddenly noticed that while she was telling her stories, she was already replacing some Tatar words with German ones. I also admired how naturally children move from rejection to acceptance of their new reality. At first, Alsu says she dreams of returning to where her toys are—and then, just as cheerfully, she starts dreaming of bringing those toys to Germany.
She finds solutions, adapts, becomes part of the world she landed in, begins speaking its language. Her flexibility and wisdom are inspiring—and at the same time heartbreaking.
Here in Berlin I see many children of Russian-speaking parents who still know Russian but already speak it worse than they do German. You begin to root for them to keep their mother tongue, to preserve themselves. At the same time, you realize global culture is one huge, rich, complex system—and it’s at the intersections, when we stay open instead of shutting down, that truly remarkable things are born. People who have gone through cultural assimilation become bridges and translators—those who can connect different worldviews and create deep dialogue and mutual understanding.
Ilya Baramia: Aigel works closely with language—it matters to her, and she watches it carefully. I grew up with my grandmother in Georgia and spoke Georgian better than Russian as a child, but then forgot it. Later, when I worked a lot with music publishers in the UK, I noticed I started thinking in English. And I went to a very intense physics-math high school—so the language of science, of math, is also very important to me.
I want my son to know English, since it’s the most universal language—the language of the internet, the emotional language of music, and the logical language of math. Which one he chooses to think and speak in doesn’t matter to me—what matters is that he feels comfortable, and I’ll always be able to communicate with him.
It was only after about the 20th time listening to that track that I started to hear where the Tatar switches into German—both languages are unfamiliar to me.
Your music has always blended different genres, but this album seems to push even further—K-pop, hard bass, dance music. What was the vision behind this sonic shift?
Aigel Gaisina: We really wanted to make a dance album. We wanted more music and fewer meanings. I always dream of making an album without words—though that probably doesn’t seem obvious, since paradoxically, the less I want to use lyrics, the longer my texts end up becoming.
Ilya Baramia: For me, it was important to keep things light—no brooding, no dragging or stickiness. I wanted it to pulse, to vibrate, to push forward. And yes, we wanted to play around with the most primitive forms and genres, because they don’t give you room to get stuck in your head.
Of course, in the end, it still turns into our own kind of interpretation.
You’ve both been living in different countries—Berlin and rural Montenegro. How has this physical and emotional distance influenced your songwriting and production?
Aigel Gaisina: I really love the Berlin techno scene — and, I moved here for that raw rave atmosphere. I think that spirit definitely made its way somehow into the album.
Ilya Baramia: We’ve always lived in different cities. Flying from Montenegro to Berlin actually takes less time than from Saint Petersburg to Kazan. Our working method hasn’t changed—it’s the same as always. And I don’t think it would change even if we lived next door to each other. For both of us, having solitude while working with material is crucial.
Since 2022, you’ve openly spoken against the war in Ukraine, which led to your performances being banned in Russia. How has this exile affected you both personally and creatively?
Aigel Gaisina: We knew it would happen, but we held out as long as we could because we wanted to keep playing shows in Russia and connecting with people inside the country. In every city we played, the audience was anti-war. In a country where public gatherings are banned, concerts became a space where people could look each other in the eye and realize they weren’t alone in their horror.
I also wanted to stay in Russia to be precise in my wording, to document what was happening. But the longer we stayed, the more suffocating it became—the pressure, the fear. I couldn’t write anything.
After we left, there was enormous relief. I remember the first night in Turkey, staying at a friend’s apartment—I lay down to sleep and it felt like a concrete slab had been lifted off me.
From then on, it was all about bureaucracy, looking for housing, adjusting to a new reality. There was no room for creativity, and I doubted I’d ever write again.
But while working on this album, we suddenly felt a surge of inspiration—it felt like we were fixed. And I think another album is already on the way.
Ilya Baramia: There’s nothing good about it. It feels like the country we lived in was thrown back a hundred years.
Despite feeling cosmopolitan inside, the reality was that I had lived in the same apartment for 50 years—I had never really moved. My son was born in the same hospital I was.
Moving wasn’t hard for me, and honestly, my current environment is better than before. But the delayed psychological response is still very present.
Oddly enough, music was affected the least. It turned out to be the most stable core.
AIGEL’s music often carries a strong social and political message, but it’s also deeply personal. Do you ever feel torn between those two sides, or are they naturally intertwined for you?
Aigel Gaisina: My speciality in university was political science, but I was never interested in activism or public life—I’m too much of an introvert for that. It’s hard for me. I existed parallel to the state.
The story of our band began when the state invaded my family and imprisoned the person I loved. That’s when the personal mixed with the political.
And the last few years in Russia have been a time of total fusion between the personal and the political. Many of my friends are in prison, their families scattered across the world. Some families broke apart because of political differences.
My child had to adapt to a new country—she was supposed to live in her own, next to family and friends. So now even the kid can’t separate the personal from the political.
Ilya Baramia: Again, this comes down to lyrics and meaning. I’ve worked with many writers and poets with radically different methods and beliefs.
When an artist creates honestly, reality seeps into the text, the meaning—it carries power. Aigel is an honest and talented poet. And she has a mesmerizing voice.
Together, we’re a strong and compelling duo.
Tracks like You Born and Pıyala have had massive global success. Do you ever feel pressure to top what you’ve done before, or is each project its own world?
Aigel Gaisina: We are completely fulfilled, happy, and self-sufficient in what we do. We’ve never done heavy promotion—each song that resonates with people finds its own organic path.
We don’t love those songs more than the others. We understand it’s a matter of luck—any one of our songs could’ve taken that place. We love all our songs, each one carries a part of our soul. So no—we don’t feel pressure to outdo ourselves.
Ilya Baramia: We’ve had enough hits already—we know how to handle them.
At first, overcoming the weight of a hit song is a challenge. When you’re asked to perform it five times in a row.
We’ve gone through that enough times that now, every new success just adds to and strengthens our live set.
Writing music is how we live.
And from our perspective, we don’t have bad songs. We’re ready to play any of them live—even all of them in a row.
Some songs are just harder to digest or more emotionally intense, while others are easier.
With Killer Qız out now, what’s next for AIGEL? Are there new sounds, collaborations, or ideas you’re excited to explore in the future?
Aigel Gaisina: We already have about half of album in Russian. That’s what we’ll be working on next.
Ilya Baramia: We’re not really into collaborations. We’ve built up enough of our own ideas—and that’s what we’re going to focus on.
As for how it will sound—that can’t really be put into words in advance. It’s electronic music—it takes shape as you work with it.
