A Closer Listen
Yesterday we covered Cole Peters‘ soundscape of memory, as the artist revisited the many houses in which he once lived. Today we extend the topic in a more specific manner, as Marcelo Cugliari spends some time in his father’s room years after his death, capturing the sounds of radios and a radio/TV while revisiting memories and musing on the contrast between presence and absence.
Void Sessions is a forty-minute work of art, ruptured at the edges by signal and static. While no external mention is made of EVP, the association cannot be disregarded, as these clusters of flutter and noise seem to burst with whispers. Cugliari seeks not to hear the actual voice of his father, but to recapture memories and feelings and consider how they have abraded or evolved in his absence. It is also impossible not to conjure up an image of a man in a chair, turning into his radio or TV for evening entertainment, perhaps with a bottle of wine or a good book. But few listeners would prefer these detuned sounds, reminiscent of radio dials stuck between stations or a television after the end of the programming day.
The title conveys the meaning. These Void Sessions are time spent where a father used to be, and where the memories still reside. A residual presence, which one might liken to a ghost, seeps from the signals. And yet to the recordist, the void – pardon the play on words – is unavoidable. When then, if anything, will rush in to fill the emptiness? If nature abhors a vacuum, will it be filled by sadness, acceptance, or a new round of questions? In the tenth minute, when birdsong becomes a factor, might one begin to look outward for answers instead of inward or indoors? When the fire begins to crackle, is it the warmth of a hearth or the burning of unresolved issues? One might, in an instance of pareidolia, glean a face in the otherwise impressionistic album cover, just as one might hear a message in the morass.
The album is intensely personal. Cugliari emphasizes that something is always present, even in perceived emptiness: a tone beyond one’s ability to hear, a timbre one previously ignored. His father is both there and not-there, the breath one hears probably that of the son, but possibly an inter-plane communication. If radio crackle can communicate the bursting of distant stars, what other information might it convey? Might the crickets be acting in consort with the crackle? The void left in a loved one’s absence causes one to wonder at worlds beyond human perception; contrary to its title, Void Sessions suggests an ineffable fullness. (Richard Allen)
Fri Jan 10 00:01:16 GMT 2025