April 2025

“When It’s Raining” explores themes of loneliness and isolation. What was the inspiration behind the song, and how did you bring those emotions to life musically?

With this whole project we’ve been working on, we’ve been heavily focused on evoking emotions and feelings through the music. So when writing and recording ‘When It’s Raining’ we spent a lot of time getting the sounds right so that you can feel those raw emotions right from the beginning.

You mentioned that the song captures the feeling of being lost in anger and sadness. Can you share more about your personal experiences or thoughts that influenced this track?

When we wrote this song we were more focused on capturing emotions rather than telling a story. A lot of our songs are very upbeat and dancy – songs that put you in a good mood. This time we decided to write something in the opposite direction. These themes of isolation and loneliness are feelings everyone experiences at some point, and we wanted to capture how it feels to be in that state through the music and lyrics. The song is meant to serve as a reminder that everyone goes through tough times, but it’s important to remember you’re not alone.

The song follows your 2024 track “Heartbeat.” How does “When It’s Raining” differ musically and emotionally from “Heartbeat”?   

 “When It’s Raining” offers such a contrast to heartbeat in almost every way. “Heartbeat” is a super upbeat track loosely involving young romance, and the latter depicts the chaos of that falling apart. We tried to create these feelings as well as we could musically for each track. It mattered to us how the songs ‘felt’ more so than just how they sounded. Visually, the music videos for each are polar opposites as well.

This track was recorded at Neil Finn’s Roundhead Studio in Auckland. How did that environment contribute to the creation of the song?

Roundhead is such a creative space for us. There’s so many toys and fun pieces of gear for us to explore, we could spend weeks there just discovering new sounds. Being able to freely create in that kind of environment is so special, and I think a lot of the magic of that song comes from the room. Every stage of the song’s creation – writing, recording, producing was all done at Roundhead.

You collaborated with producers Joel Jones and Nic Manders, as well as Vivek Gabriel for mastering. How did they help shape the sound of “When It’s Raining”?

All three of them had such a vital role in the song coming into fruition and it really wouldn’t be possible without them. They really are the best of the best.

The visual collaboration with Tom Grut for the music video sounds exciting. Can you talk about the creative process behind the video and how it complements the song’s mood?

Tom is a genius… He totally gets our creative vision but takes our ideas and makes them 100x better. For this song, we knew we wanted rain, and we wanted lots of performance shots. When we started shooting, we were filming with the intention of the video being in colour but Tom had the brilliant idea of seeing how it would look in black and white, and we didn’t look back. That black and white palette shaped the song’s whole visual identity and it was such a good call from Tom.

You’ve signed with EMPIRE, marking a huge milestone for the band. What does this mean for you, and how does it impact your future as a band on the global stage?

Signing with EMPIRE has been so awesome for us, the team there has been so amazing and supportive of us and what we want to do and allowing us to create. We’ve always had dreams of being a global band, and reaching international markets has always been on the cards for us. We recently made our first trip over to the states to play some shows, which was such an incredible experience for us. EMPIRE has such an incredible global presence which makes us really excited to travel and share our music with the rest of the world.

Your music blends indie pop and rock influences. How would you describe your musical evolution, and where do you see yourselves heading in the future with this new direction?

Our main focus has always been to make music that we would want to listen to, and as we expand our listening palette we bring in a wider range of influences to the creative process. One thing we can guarantee is that we’ll stay true to who we are as musicians and make music that we’re proud of, and this will evolve as our taste evolves. Hopefully others will resonate with that.

The song is described as one that allows listeners to feel seen in their struggles. What do you hope listeners take away from “When It’s Raining”?

I think more than anything, we hope that listeners can feel a little less alone in their struggles. It’s super normal to feel the emotions the song explores, so we want people to know that it’s okay to feel rubbish, and you’re really not alone.

Looking ahead, what’s next for Borderline? Are there any upcoming projects or plans you’re particularly excited about in 2025?

100%, we’ve been hard at work for the past year and a half writing a bunch of new music, and we’ve spent the last 6 months recording a large handful of them. We’re about 60% done, and they are sounding so good. We’re so excited to share this new project with you, we think it’s our best work yet. We’ve also got lots more plans for touring in the coming year, lots of international shows and a bunch at home in NZ too. Keep an eye on our socials for updates, but we can’t wait to see a bunch more of the world this year and share our music with you.

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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.

Revel, Revel is your debut album—what emotions and ideas were at the core of this project? Was there a specific moment when you knew it was time to create this record?

I had a few things that didn’t go my way personally in late 2023, and it provided the spark and focus necessary to commit to and complete the project from a writing perspective. I had songs floating around without a home and I resolved then to produce an album. The recording came very quickly with that determination.  

Many of your songs, like Raspberry Water and Canopies, were inspired by poems, books, and personal recordings. Can you share more about your songwriting process and how these influences shape your music?

I don’t have a set process. I try different methods. I always have dozens of riffs or chord progressions floating around on my phone, and notes and books full of poems or lyrics. Most of these are incomplete, much of it is rubbish – but there is also the odd interesting line. I write down phrases I read, hear, dream – everything. It rarely leads to the eventual theme of the song but sets me on a path I wouldn’t take if I sat down with a pencil and paper.  

Once I’ve accumulated lots of stuff or it’s time to write a body of work I spend a couple of days compiling everything. But that only gets me to stage 2 because much of what I have is incomplete – but it allows me to expand from there. I don’t really do anything quickly or efficiently! 

There’s an interesting mix of escapism, absurdity, and reality throughout the album. Were you aiming for a particular narrative or mood, or did these themes emerge naturally?

They just emerged, but probably reflect my nature and what I read and listen to, and my overall philosophy on life.

Wildcat takes a departure from your usual style into classic rock. What inspired this shift, and do you see yourself exploring more of this sound in the future?

‘Wildcat’ gives the record a lighter mood – and that was deliberate. I wanted something fun to contrast with other songs. I reckon a verse like “Oh you won’t break, strong like cognac, let’s drink to that” achieves it haha. The eventual mix rocked it up a bit and the guitar has a bluesier riff – but there are also other production elements consistent with the record. It fits into the overall theme of having multiple styles and is just one of those styles within the overall album. 

You worked with producer Robert Muinos, known for his bold mixing choices. How did his approach shape Revel, Revel, and what was the most unexpected or exciting part of the production process?

Rob took it to another level. He didn’t completely transform the original sounds but added the sparkle. His added flavours were all subtle – but brilliant and creative. For example, he’d run the vocals through a pedal in certain parts or focus in on a particular hi hat sound and make it wild.

It was all very exciting. Every song has some magic from a production perspective. A couple of favourite moments are Canopies – where a spare bass track was used it as a subtle background layer that gives the song a beautiful dimension. And Grenades – where the bass was re-tracked through an analogue octave pedal which inconsistently splutters all over the place and gives the song real power.  

The album combines electronic and analog elements, as heard in Raspberry Water. How do you balance these contrasting textures while maintaining a cohesive sound?

Everything was performed by me so I think that helps. It’s a good question but I think that balance is what makes this record different from other works. There are plenty of examples of that combination working in other records but perhaps not too much with some of the types of tracks here where most people would produce those layers with other analog elements – and I get that. But it gives these tunes a point of difference. 

Your project name has a fascinating origin—naming it after a general known for a surrender to Napoleon. What drew you to this name, and does it carry any deeper meaning for your music?

I wanted the name to stand out! I liked the ring of General Mack. He was also known as “the unfortunate General Mack” which would have been good too…perhaps for a future album. The grapeshot aspect was after the weapon which was a grouping of small iron balls shot from a cannon that resembled a bunch of grapes. The idea I had was that with many different styles on the album, it’s General Mack’s ‘grapeshot of tunes’ as if the grapeshot was like a shotgun release. A grapeshot is slightly different but I liked how it sounded anyway. 

You’ve played in bands in both Melbourne and LA, including Cannon and Damndogs. How has your experience in those scenes influenced your solo work?

I think everything I’ve done so far has in some way influenced my solo work. It’s one big adventure of discovery, learning, accidents, and fun.

With the album launch at The Fitzroy Pinnacle approaching, how do you plan to translate the album’s layered, cinematic sound into a live setting?

I have a really great band and we have a few tricks to help with that. Sometimes it will be layered and cinematic reflecting the album and other times it will be quite different. I’m not looking to replicate everything precisely. Playing live needs to have an energy and a connection to the audience – that’s the main focus.

Now that Revel, Revel is out in the world, what’s next for General Mack’s Grapeshot? Do you already have ideas for your next project, or are you focusing on performing and seeing how this record resonates first?

For now, I look forward to performing the record. I’ve been quite moved by the feedback I’ve received from people who have bought the album from all over the world. So that’s really encouraging. 

Moving forward, I have a new album close to being written, which is exciting, and I’m already planning for the recording of that later this year. So hopefully lots more to come for GMG!   

General Mack’s Grapeshot Revel, Revel Launch Show: 

Saturday 12 April 

The Fitzroy Pinnacle, VIC 

Supports: Tallulah Grace & Wild Dog Mountains
Tickets via Oztix