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Sonic Sculpture — Sonic Sculpture
(Cosmic Egg UTCE 015, 2018, DL / CDr)

by Peter Thelen, Published 2025-08-20

Sonic Sculpture Cover art

Here is a set of recordings by a band so obscure that they were only discovered by accident years after they were made in the mid-90s through 1999. Band leader Wolfgang Seidel (guitar and vocals) and another founding member Willi Voss (saxes, flute, synth) were initially the core members, and with drummer Volker Bohn used the band name Die Doingermänner in their home town of Kiel in Northern Germany, until 1996 when Bohn bailed and was replaced by Mathias Burmester (trumpet, voice) at which point the band name changed to Sonic Sculpture. Only the closing track here remains of that initial pre-’96 edition of the group — the first five cuts were recorded by the later trio, sometimes with guests like Helmut Lenz (voice, percussion, clarinet), who also wrote the lyrics. They recorded every session for posterity, not with any thought of releasing an album, but in ‘99 Seidel decided to compile a CDr just for distribution among friends, and one of those made its way to the Freeman brothers in the UK, and that’s how it ended up getting a wider release on their Cosmic Egg label, first on CDr and then many years later as a digital download. This is a crazy mix of free-jazz improvisation, ambient, psychedelic rock, and electronic flavoring, no doubt inspired by Miles Davis and John Coltrane, but certainly others as well (Zawinul among them), the key ingredient being improv. The opening eleven-plus minute wandering panorama, “Ein Paar Sekunden Stille / Barkau Train,” definitely shows that Sonic Sculpture has a keen ability to create their hybrid sounds telepathically in the moment. “Zeitkaleidoskop” follows it with a powerful trumpet solo soaring over a stewing cauldron of guitar and electronics, and toward the end some spoken texts. Another sprawling epic, “Tagesausflug in der Natur,” is well beyond unpredictable, moving from chaotic to melodic and back with ease as the piece slowly builds with a curious intensity, eventually giving way to the 24-minute “Bright Sunshine, Darkest Night” where the listener is exposed to strangeness of all kinds, absolute free-form jazz and electronics floating around in all directions, voices, chirping sounds, psychedelic, and at times completely immersive. “Space” provides a few minutes of ambient respite before  the ten-minute closer, “Heißer Julitag,” which is by the original trio, a piece with vocals that proves to be as strange as anything else here. Sonic Sculpture is something that genre boundary breaking free-improv fans will certainly find of interest.

Filed under: Archives, 2018 releases

Related artist(s): Sonic Sculpture

More info
http://cosmicegg1.bandcamp.com/album/sonic-sculpture

 

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