Void Sessions: an exploration of the notion of emptiness turns out busy and expansive

Marcelo Cugliari, Void Sessions, Belgium, Unfathomless, U86 CD (2024)

Based in Buenos Aires, experimental film director / photographer Marcelo Cugliari began making and releasing soundscape works based on field recordings and the use of objects and electronics in 2023. “Void Sessions” is his second major work for a label, and his first for Unfathomless, the debut recording being a cassette “Unknown Landscapes” for Japanese experimental music / noise label Neus-318 in 2024. “Void Sessions” is a homage to Cugliari’s father who passed away in 2021, exploring the concept of emptiness, physically and metaphorically, especially where the boundary of the physical meets and blurs into the psychological and the metaphorical. People we have known who have passed away may not be present physically but as long as we have memories or documentation of them, can they really be said to have passed away if other realms are not empty of them?

The sole track on “Void Sessions” was made in Cugliari père’s room in Buenos Aires with the use of radio sets and a TV / radio as the primary sound sources, with the sounds produced later edited by Cugliari. It’s a very eerie and spooky work, often more hissy than noisy, with sounds that could be interpreted as ghost voices or actions (in pointillist noise) of beings in multidimensional worlds existing in parallel with ours. There are not many sounds that appear familiar to my ears, and most of those are in the far background. Depending on where you’re coming from, in terms of what music and soundscapes you already know, the sequence of sounds and noises at times may suggest a journey or a struggle to reach or to understand something beyond normal human experience. Later in the recording, sounds of rain and water droplets bring some semblance of familiarity, maybe even comfort, and many of the sounds become very rhythmic and are almost on the cusp of forming melodies – but the overall tenor of the entire work is even with very few abrupt or unpleasant surprises.

Listening to this recording, you may not necessarily feel the emotions that Cugliari felt on making it, but you will certainly be aware of the immense spaces contained within it. A paradox of empty space containing within it the potential for filling the whole space comes to mind as well. At the very least, listening to a work like “Void Sessions” will fill your mind and imagination with what could be, as well as what is and what was … certainly at some level this “void session” is not void at all.