Hunters of the Alps Release Music Video for "Naufragio"

"Naufragio," the new song and video by Hunters of the Alps, was a painful labor of love for the act's mastermind, Mario Giancarlo. The Spanish-language song, whose title means shipwreck in English, was a response to a diagnosis his mother received.

"In 2020, we knew something was off with my mother. She was entering Alzheimer's, which is something I never imagined," Giancarlo tells New Times over the phone. "The song and the whole EP are about the emotional toll. It combines elements of what my family and I were feeling."

When Giancarlo first dreamed up the song, he knew the video had to be a collection of home movies that his family had filmed throughout his childhood in Lima and Miami.

"The video is the best memories of my family," he adds. "It took about four years. First, I had to find and digitize the tapes; then, I had to edit them. One was a Betamax tape — that's how old it was. What you see in the final video was everything I had."

Although Hunters of the Alps is now a very personal extension of Giancarlo, it started in 2012 as a band. Giancarlo, who was previously a member of the local rock band Modernage, sent a demo he created of new songs to the long-gone Miami venue Bardot. Bardot liked it so much that the venue booked him to open for Twin Shadow. The only problem was he didn't have a band to create the music in a live setting. He quickly filled out Hunters of the Alps, but when the trio fell apart in 2016, Giancarlo revived Hunters of the Alps as a personal project in 2020.

"It's now an exercise in sharing all the music I enjoy. It's a combination of genres and fusions that define me. It mixes elements of Latin America and the aesthetics I like, whether dreamwave, postpunk, or synth," he explains.

But no man is an island, and Giancarlo appreciates the collaborators who help make his visions a reality.
"I'm not musically gifted; I don't know how to read sheet music," he admits. "I know enough chords on guitar and piano to write songs. Thankfully, I grew up in an era where I can record demos on a phone and then have someone recreate it for me."

For "Naufragio," Giancarlo reached out to his friend Mike Diaz, who makes music under the name Millionyoung, and enlisted several local musicians, including Adrian Garcia and Rick Moon, to contribute instrumentals. "Mike disassembled the demo and rebuilt it with instruments that are more him. That's how it ended up sounding more synthy, though some of my guitars from the demo are still in it," Giancarlo says.

"Naufragio" is the second single from Hunters' upcoming six-song EP, Roma, scheduled for release in October. Roma, Giancarlo says, is an acronym for "Recordar y olvidar memorias abstractas," which he translates as "Remember to forget abstract moments. "I'm playing with random memories. Roma is also the name of the first movie theater I can remember going to in Lima with my mom to see Back to the Future Part II," he adds.

Though English is now the language Giancarlo dreams in, four of the six songs on Roma, including "Naufragio," are in his native Spanish. "I'll sit down on the guitar, and if the words come out in English, then the song ends up being in English. If it comes out in Spanish, then the song is in Spanish," he says.

The creative process will continue for Hunters of the Alps as Giancarlo works on new music for a full-length record he hopes to release in 2025.

"I've got seven or eight songs mostly done. I want to record a few more before we decide the final songs on it," he says, adding that it will be sonically different from the music on Roma. "Hunters can sound very different from week to week. Maybe to its own detriment, but I want to work with as many extremely creative people as I can."