EFREM À L'ÉCOLE DE RIEN - Halieutiké

On hot summer days like the ones we're living through, heading to the seaside with friends and fishing rods isn't a bad idea at all - and while you wait for a bite, you get to chat, swap stories, real or made up. Sometimes those stories turn into songs. That's exactly what happened to Marco Lombardi Satriani, voice, guitar, synth and mastermind of Efrem, a seasoned outfit based along the Bologna-Ferrara axis, capable of turning a family ritual once shared with his father into a kind of concept album titled "Halieutiké", a term borrowed from ancient Greek meaning the art of fishing. Twelve songs that mark the third life of Efrem, an alternative rock project launched twenty-five years ago by two university students with big dreams, the aforementioned Marco and his friend Corrado Barberio (drums). After early efforts released under the name Particularly Frame Scene, the first real change of direction came with the switch to Efrem (Marco's nickname) and the move to singing in Italian. In the post-pandemic years came another reshuffle: the band's name became "Efrem à l'école de rien", and line-up changes brought in Francesco Sechi and Massimo Pocaterra on guitars and Matia Fini on bass.

The result of the work carried out in recent months is precisely “Halieutiké”, a project that presents a completely renewed formula, setting aside the post-rock spaces of their early days and the indie instincts developed in some subsequent works, in order to focus on a sound with an evident nineties imprint. The album's stylistic signature is clearly traceable in songs like “Atman”, where the reverence for Marlene Kuntz and for the sounds that in the Nineties defined the golden age of Italian alternative rock comes through strongly.
But Efrem rewrite the score to suit their own purposes, also adding an unexpected instrumental coda that functions as a genuine narrative twist. Even more thrilling is the result achieved in “Ecate”, where a first section very much in the vein of Verdena is followed by a second part in which the declamatory delivery and guitar work closely recall the Massimo Volume experience, before opening up toward a finale in the style of Afterhours, in their “Ballate per piccole iene” era (go back and listen to “La vedova bianca”). Not to mention a “Dreyfus” that incorporates an inspired updating of the seminal Ritmo Tribale experience.

But “Halieutiké” has no intention of being a derivative project — if anything, it's one of contamination, a guitar record played with tremendous care and skill down to the smallest details, with complex architectures ready to accommodate math-rock ambitions (the opening prologue “Do ut des”), folk-flavored detours (the gentle farewell captured in the title track) and, in places, even structures and changes of direction that come within a hair's breadth of prog. Twelve tracks, three of them instrumental, to rewrite the story of a band and, in some way, try to shine a light on possible new scenarios for our country's entire guitar-oriented scene.

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13/07/2026