Life, death, sex and fashion — EV’s euro-infused persona

European Vampire — the Franco-Italo-British trio composed of Lorenzo Sutto-Lewis, Riccardo Marsili Feliciangeli, and Angus Spike Mc Guinness— has just released its second EP, EV2. Ode to their own mythos, the record blends oneiric melodies where classic pop and full blown orchestras clash with sharp tongues. 

A tall silhouette awaits on rue des Martyrs. It’s Lorenzo Sutto Lewis. His glistening blue eyes are stitched on a white chalk face, scanning each and every move of a Parisian April morning. The street is packed. Though it’s officially spring, the sky has turned into cold steel and everyone’s ass has frozen — all except for Lorenzo’s. The “model-slash-musician” seems perfectly at ease. Aligned, serene, and still, he extends his long arms and points down an adjacent street: “This is where I live. Paris is my city for now.”

Lead singer of European Vampire, Lorenzo is an Italian gentleman with a taste for French melancholy. 

“My mother is French. I’m Italian to the French and French to the Italians”. Spaghetti al blue blood. Lorenzo spins his trans-European identity into a full-blown aesthetic: contradictions and that never-outdated mal du siècle. 

There is a distinct rupture between your first and second EP. It feels like a form of redemption: straight to Church from the club. Can you explain what you tried to convey ? 

EV2 is a shift. Our first records were more conceptual and ironic. You could feel club lights hitting your face just listening to Tom Ford, one of our first tracks. On this new EP, everything is more vulnerable: our lyrics and melodies are raw and laced with deeper musical experimentations. We wanted to create something and expose our internal tensions. Less mask, more skin. It’s a different side of European Vampire but still very complementary. In many ways, EV2 is an answer to what came before. 

Who’s behind the EP?

It’s always the same core: me, Riccardo, and Angus. We started working on this EP three years ago. I wrote Comme des Anges, Chien, and Hit the Ground after a few months of what you might call “redemption”. Some of it was written at my mother’s place in Bordeaux, some in Italy, some in London — after a really rough stretch of touring that forced us to rethink everything. We were tired, exhausted and empty. We wanted to do something different. With Hit the Ground, that shift happened. We recorded everything using only my voice and the bass for the melody. Then we brought in a friend of ours, Aliche Albanese, who sings in a Roman blues choir. Her voice comes in at the end — angelic. It’s a song about collapse, transformation, and metamorphosis. About asking someone: Will you stay, even if I fall?

Would you say that this EP is more personal ? 

Very. Chien came out of an internal breakup — both in love and in identity. It’s the first track where Angus sings his own text. I had lost my voice, was taking cortisone, drinking too much, smoking too much. The song embalms that Bukowskian state of mind, where one simply screams: “I feel like a dog.”It’s melancholic, yet light — a mix of detachment and raw emotion, somewhere between Dutronc and Françoise Hardy.

What about Comme des Anges ? 

This piece evolved over the years. The melody first came to me as I pictured the figure atop the Colonne de Juillet in Place de la Bastille. I was playing with French political imagery and fashion, and had originally titled the song Gilets Jaunes Balenciaga. The lyrics were filled with irony, closer to what I was used to doing. But at some point, I wrote a line about wanting to dance with that figure — the one holding the golden flame of truth. I erased everything else, kept that line, and built the entire song around it. It became something far more poetic, more romantic. It was inspired, in part, by Mylène Farmer’s California.

There’s a lot of interplay between irony and sensitivity in your work.

That’s the duality. European Vampire started as a character — like Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust or the Thin White Duke — something larger than life. At first, it was about fully embracing the clichés, inhabiting them completely. But over time, you can’t fake it forever. I think people need both: glamour and honesty. There’s always some truth in irony.

What about the figure of Salome in the track Hommage / Salomé?

I was fascinated by her. Salomé asked for Jean-Baptist’s head and she got it. She’s an innocent perversion. She’s beauty and betrayal. She doesn’t take responsibility and demands everything. The figure of Salomé resonates with that part of the self everyone is  afraid to look at. The one that says: “take it all, but leave me your mouth for one last kiss”. This song is about saying goodbye to love, even temporarily, for the sake of hedonism. Not because you want to, but because you have to.

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She seems to be a good illustration of what it means to be a European Vampire, but how would you define EV? 

It’s a costume. It’s also a character that feeds on all the great romantics from Byron and Baudelaire to Chet Baker and Luigi Tenco. I’m not claiming to be them. But I live for iconography. I breathe it. It’s in my music, my clothes, my words. I’d rather be tied to that lineage than to any contemporary trend. I don’t have tattoos, but if I did, they’d be quotes.

I’ve worked in fashion for fifteen years. I know how casting works. I know how quickly a person can become a product. That’s why we created our own. European Vampire is a form of resistance — an embodiment of the clichés people project too quickly. We claim them, distort them, and make them ours.

So where does European Vampire go from here?

We’ll go back to the clubs. We’ll make people dance again and keep this emotional, human side. It’s all part of the same language. We’re not trying to repeat ourselves or please everyone. We respect the stage and the music. We want to stay true — to ourselves and to what we feel.

What about the audience? 

Music without an audience is a hobby. But you shouldn’t listen to the audience. You should breathe, not overthink. Make what you believe in, and the right people will find you.

Final word?

Don’t be afraid. Don’t be perfect. Say what you need to say — even if the ship is sinking.

Words by Elinor Weil

Photos by Theo Soyez and Vic Lee

Video by Edoardo Mariano