Similou is a project by Vincenzo Marando, a long-time guitarist of Movie Star Junkies – a band known for their fiery garage/roots/punk sounds since 2006. After leaving the band in 2022, Vincenzo is now also active as a member of psychedelic rock trio Heart Of Snake.

‘Inferno Bizzarro’ is the debut album by Similou, which is a work entirely written, recorded and mixed by him at home in the course of over two years, where some of his less evident passions now flow free. The sound and aesthetics of exotica, the rich world of Italian library music, the blues and primitivist roots, the creative use of sampling…

“I totally needed a redefinition as an artist”

It’s great to have you Vincenzo. Tell us how you decided to start the Similou project?

Vincenzo Marando: Thank you for having me! I started this project because I was tired of explaining to drummers what I wanted them to play!

How long did you work on your labest album?

I would say a couple of years, but it’s actually more of a flow that I have of writing music, so ‘Inferno Bizzarro’ is just a segment of it. I took three or four tracks that seemed to have something in common and tried to write coherent stuff around them. Unfortunately coherence is not my best virtue.

Have you found the recent isolation creatively challenging or freeing?

I totally needed a redefinition as an artist after this experience. That’s probably why I felt like starting a project alone. I (not just me of course) experienced real loneliness, maybe ‘Inferno Bizzarro’ is about that.

What’s the story behind ‘Inferno Bizzarro’?

There’s not a proper story, I consider it more like a collection of short stories than a novel. Some are encouraging, others are scary, some are set in the past, others in the future. The challenge was to find a common sense between all these worlds. Not sure if I managed to.

<a href="https://love-boat.bandcamp.com/album/inferno-bizzarro">Inferno Bizzarro by SIMILOU</a>

The album is created in a very DIY-way, do you feel that gives a certain touch to the music?

I feel that the way I recorded it is inherent to how I thought and played it. I felt that there was an interplay between those three things so I kinda worked on it. I mean, all the album (except samples) is recorded on a phone, all I did was choose sounds that I really wanted to play in that precise moment and put them together. A lot of material I recorded was useless, honestly, so I threw it away, but to me it’s still a good exercise to write and just see where it goes.

What’s scary about phones is that nowadays you are completely alone in front of your device. All I did was to send some information back into the device. The fact that it sounds “poor” makes it more fun to my ear. For example, the song ‘Fire/Flames’ was on Italian national radio tonight, and I like how it broke the flow of other songs with proper production.

“When you’re recording music by yourself you have a totally different perception”

What were some of the main inspirations for it? What kind of record did you want to make?

I was always inspired by artists who entirely record/produce their own works, like Prince, Daniel Johnston, Moondog, Paul McCartney, Cody Chesnutt’s first album, only to name the first that come to mind. When you’re recording music by yourself you have a totally different perception than when you’re doing it with others. Or at least I do. For example, ‘Inferno Bizzarro’ only sounded weird/grotesque when I listened to it with someone else. When I was alone it was perfectly normal, I swear.

Tell us where the album was recorded and produced?

In a room of the house where I moved with my girlfriend after the first lockdown. She’s French, so I went to pick her up in Toulouse, and we moved to this very small town in the mountains full of old people, and mysteriously they are all ex-drummers. My neighbour is an 80 years old man, an expert in martial arts, snakes and insects, ancient Egypt and weapons. He’s an ex drummer, too. He had troubles with the CIA in the early nineties (I swear it’s 95% true).

Also, the name of the town is Coassolo, and apparently it comes from a legend: during the Plague around 1200 AD. There was only one citizen left alive, and he used to scream to pilgrims passing by: “Mi sun qua sül” (‘I’m here alone’). So “qua sül” became Coassolo. And that’s where I moved after the first lockdown and I started learning drums, isn’t that weird?

Would you mind talking about your background? How did you first get interested in music and what led to Movie Star Junkies?

I grew up in a family that wasn’t particularly into music except my father can play a little guitar and my mother can’t keep from singing along with the tv or the radio. She has a lovely voice.

I know Stefano (the singer from Movie Star Junkies) from high school, we started playing music together basically. With our high school band we ended up touring Europe and the west coast of the USA. We played surf inspired music, so I would say that’s where I can find the roots of my guitar playing. Italian soundtrack composers and American music like Link Wray, but also punk and garage and blues. A few years later Stefano started Movie Star Junkies, and I joined after a couple of shows. We toured a lot for the next ten years or so.

I started playing music to get in touch with people and travel the world, and I would say that’s still what keeps me going.

What’s currently cooking in the band?

We’re practicing, we’re getting good, the guys I’m playing with are doing a great job. We have a few shows booked but I hope it will be easier to find shows when people will be able to listen to the whole album. I’m a very lazy person, especially at finding shows.

What about Heart Of Snake? Tell us about that.

Heart Of Snake is a psychedelic trip which started back in 2016, when I picked up the classical guitar and started jamming with my (at the time) new friend Alberto Danzi. We have a cassette out on Maple Death Records from Bologna. Cosimo Rosa joined us for the last album we recorded (we’re still mixing it!). Plus there will be a surprise guest in the album, a young artist that came as a guest and ended up playing on almost every song in the album, and pushing it a lot further! Can’t wait to finish it.

Let’s end this interview with some of your favourite albums. Have you found something new lately you would like to recommend to our

I could recommend some new Italian music, like today I listened to the new album by Claudio Rocchetti, such mysterious music! Or ‘Alto Piano’ by Everest Magma (2022), or a band called Lametia, kind of surprising at times! Not to mention my buddy Krano (he did the mash up on the cover of ‘Inferno Bizzarro’), he just released an album called ‘Lentius Profundius Suavius,’ doom folk in venetian dialect. And of course The Thugs!

Klemen Breznikar

Headline photo: Federico Bevacqua

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