Kapital Band 1 is a project by the cellist and laptop artist Nicholas Bussmann and the drummer Martin Brandlmayr, two very active musicians along the Vienna-Berlin axis. They met in 2002 after Brandlmayr moved to Berlin for a year and began to play shows under various names, constantly developing their own musical ideas.

Bussmann and Brandlmayr quickly found out that they share the same feelings about things they themselves call “pop” or “funk”. One will not find a regular pop track on it, but in a mathematical sense Kapital Band 1’s work could be seen as a function of pop—pop that is somehow stripped down to its basic idea which gives room for new aesthetics. However, all of these classic terms serve as more or less hidden parameters in their tricky coordinate system, which deals with an overall conceptual frame integrating the two into a complex web of improvisation, time-keeping and tactical studio intrigue.

The 2CD is Kapital Band 1’s debut album, and is available from Mosz/Vienna. The pieces on the album have one thing in common: they play around with something you don’t hear. The CD comes in a double case with a second CD that looks identical. It’s a blank CDR. You can put music on it or use it as a shaving mirror.