Transport
Niels Latomme
How did the band started?
Niklas Wandt
The band started around 2010 in Essen, Germany under the moniker “panzerdivision Copacabana” playing small DIY shows in the experimental concert series “Denkodrom”. I was still an MC and initially got to know Edis because he made beats for me. Nils came as part of the package.
NL
How is the Cologne scene, it seems you are creating a new chapter in the German Kraut rock tradition? Do you see it that way?
NW
We’re in that small and familial scene only peripherally, because we have a lot of friends there, and we work there regularly. Edis and Nils are in Essen, Ruhrgebiet with its much smaller scene and I moved to Berlin a couple of years back. But we keep doing stuff in Cologne and Düsseldorf. It’s like a little village with all the comforts and disadvantages.
I don’t know if we are part of a new chapter in kraut. Our mode of improvising and playing together is fed by a love of lots of records and bands — djing in this case feeds back to playing music.
NL
Tell me about Ana Ott records?
NW
Ana Ott is the two-man operation of two old friends Felix Möser and Dennis Dycks from the small town of Mülheim. They’re churning out interesting underground music with their own money without regard to sales or even profitability.
NL
How is the record going, and how came it into existence?
NW
No idea. It got some nice little reviews and particularly my DJ friends into kosmische musik have a fondness for it. We recorded by laying down skeletal basic tracks at the Makroscope in Mülheim in 2014. In 2016 we overdubbed a lot and finally got it done.
NL
You all have solo projects as well, tell a bit about them, and how do they relate to Transport?
NW
Yes, there is a lot of other projects, interrelated and not. Nils and me play in a psychedelic pop band called Oracles; Edis and Nils have an ambient techno project called Gras (there is a 12 inch out on Riviera Club). I’m currently working live and in the studio with Jan Schulte aka Wolf Müller and we’ll have a record coming up later this year on Growing Bin records. Also we are working on a new NDW project called Neuzeitliche Bodenbeläge and on a lot of free improvisation. Recently I just released a trio recording with Tobias Delius on sax and Nicola Hein on guitar on Impakt Records.
NL
What is your favourite guilty pleasure?
NW
Fried things, AOR, Smooth Jazz, soft, gelatinous foods.