Mau and Ricky present “Hotel Caracas” their most personal and genuine work: “It was healing”

“Enjoy the journey, appreciate the journey”, reads the invitation proposed by Mau and Ricky to introduce us to their third studio album, “Hotel Caracas”. A concept album that led them to return, after 15 years, to Venezuela, the land where they were born and departed. As if it were a song for each year away, “Hotel Caracas” contains 15 songs ranging from ballads to reggaetton, from the most intimate to the guests and some personal tastes that the Montaner brothers propose for their most representative work to date. Since Filo.news we accepted the invitation and chatted with Mau and Ricky about how the process of creating this album was. Ricky: “It was a very nice creative process, we had the opportunity to pause for a while, because Mau had just had a child so that was our excuse to put a pause on our agenda and concentrate on creating something special”, the artist begins. And he adds: “We didn’t want to just make an album, but we wanted to think about all the details, from the uniform that we were going to have on all the time, in the key that we were going to have in “Hotel Caracas” which is like that physical representation of what it means to be part of this community, everything, to design from the concept of art, videos. Where our main focus was to create our own universe,” Ricky explains. In addition, this album, which is the third of their career, led them to return with a great bet to their homeland, Venezuela, where together with a team of 200 people they toured the country to portray her beauty, record the videos and a documentary that will soon come to light. “We were in pre-production for 2 or 3 months writing the whole story to put all the videos together and thinking about how to make it a reality in Venezuela”, Ricky pointed out about the creative process they carried out in 2023. And he says: “We had not returned for 15 years, and apart from that, I don’t know how many decades had not been recorded in Venezuela in cinema. So it was a challenge in every way, we were more than 200 Venezuelans going around in Venezuela trying to make this a reality, and nothing, it was a universe that we wanted to create with us, and our personal needs in mind, but also with the people who follow us”, highlighted the conceptual work that can already be enjoyed from the different platforms. For his part, Mau affirms that this trip was one of the most healing things he has experienced so far and describes what that return to his roots was like: “I would say it was my favorite trip in my life. We healed a lot of things that we had to heal, and then it became a personal journey for us, to reconnect, and it became a journey to capture Venezuelan beauty. It was very spectacular,” expresses with happiness. While he advances: “We had the opportunity to travel all over the country, to film everything, not only for the videos, but also for a documentary that is going to come out in the future and I am very happy. It changed my life completely,” Remarks. The album also has several collaborations such as ‘Great day’, with Guaynaa, ‘Until you forget’ with legendary Puerto Rican street artist Arcángel, or ‘Spectacular‘with the incorporation of Illegals. In addition ‘Song 2’track that Ricky wrote for his wife Stef Roitman incorporates the first audio that the model sent him, after their first date, among other treats that were given as a sample I’ll let your hair down’ de Yandel on track 10 ‘Beautiful way to die’.This conceptual work finds them, not only more musically mature but with a full heart, with a Mau who has recently become a father and with his life partners complementing the experiences side by side. The artists make clear the importance of love, values and the family with which they have always identified. To close we talked about mental health and how they live it and both highlight the fundamentals of family and having genuine bonds: “We have people around us with whom we can talk and people we admire a lot in the subject that obviously helps us to live it, but also, we have realized the beauty of going through it with transparency, and being vulnerable and open to talk about the subject,” Mau said. “Talking about it makes the monster fall apart a little bit,” Warns. Ricky: “I feel that over the years I have realized that staying creative isuda. When we are creative is when our mental health is most stable. The problem is when we are not creating and we do not have that way to unload and you feel a little unbalanced”, concludes the artist. Hotel Caracas was produced by Malay, and the material filmed in 16mm was directed by Daniel Durán where in 15 chapters Mau and Ricky star in a film that takes them on a tour of their homeland with a great team of Venezuelans.

Original source in Spanish