Zauber der Moderne is a three-day music festival at Künstlerhaus Stuttgart with Richard Youngs, Shirley Collins, Graham Lambkin, Alasdair Roberts, F.S.K., Vic Godard & Subway Sect and Metabolismus, with DJ sets by Flora Lenzmann and Werner Nötzel.

This is a wilfully assorted combination of sensibilities and approaches, where connections extend beyond stylistic categories and speak of shared affinities: the sounds contain certain contingent and transformative qualities, as well as being brought together by the programmers being fans and followers of the music. Zauber der Moderne is conceived as a total experience extending across two levels of Künstlerhaus – there will be a film programme in the cinema, running alongside the music festival, a salon and bar with food and drink – looking to gather and combine the avant-garde music and arts scenes of Stuttgart and beyond.

With visual elements by Graham Lambkin and Christian Flamm, set design by Monika Nuber and Julia Lenzmann, a bar by Moritz Finkbeiner and food by Björn Luchterhand.

Curated by Michael Paukner and Fatima Hellberg.

PROGRAMME

Friday 3 May from 8pm
Richard Youngs
Shirley Collins with Ian Kearey
Graham Lambkin
DJ Werner

At 5pm, the screening programme launches with The Ballad of Shirley Collins, followed by a Q&A with Collins and producer Paul Williams.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Glasgow-based musician and multi-instrumentalist Richard Youngs has been involved with music since early childhood and has attempted to harness the same experimental, playful power in his live performances and in his more than 140 releases. This creative openness has led him to explore different musical genres – he has performed in folk clubs, worked with the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, recorded a modern pop album and recently explored leftfield disco with his new project AMOR. Classically trained in piano and guitar, he musically grew up in the shadow cast by punk, adopting alternative recording techniques and an independent DIY ethic. In 1990 he founded the label No Fans Records where he has released only his own work. A keen collaborator, his musical work includes exchanges with Scottish bagpiper Donald Lindsay, Arts Foundation of New Zealand Award laureate winner Alastair Galbraith, Portuguese organist David Maranha, American drummer Chris Corsano, and Japanese guitarist Makoto Kawabata (Acid Mothers Temple), among others.

Pioneering folk singer Shirley Collins (b. 1935) developed her sound with her sister Dolly, whose accompaniment on piano and portative organ created unique settings for her plain, austere singing style. In 1959, Collins and American ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax travelled in the Southern US collecting and recording songs, primarily blues and bluegrass music, a selection of which were released as a series of twelve LPs, titled “Sounds of the South”. Her records, which came to have a key influence on the English Folk Revival of the 1960s and 70s include The Power of the True Love Knot (1968), Anthems in Eden (1969) and Adieu to Old England (1974). A disorder of the vocal chords forced her into early retirement in the 1980s. She returned to recording in 2016 and released Lodestar, her first new album in 38 years, a critically acclaimed work, by some regarded her best.

Graham Lambkin is a multidisciplinary artist based in London, who first came to prominence in the early 90s through the formation of his music group The Shadow Ring. Combining a post-punk ethic with folk music, cracked electronics, and surreal wordplay, The Shadow Ring created a unique hybrid sound that set them apart from their peers and continues to show as an influence today. Since the early 2000s, Lambkin has released a series of striking and highly original solo albums, including Salmon Run (2007) and Amateur Doubles (2012), The Breadwinner (2007) – a critically acclaimed trilogy with experimental tape musician Jason Lescalleet, Photographs (2013), Community (2016), No Better No Worse (2017) and Green Ways with Áine O’Dwyer (2018). He founded and run the Kye Label between 2001 and 2017 and as a visual artist, has exhibited his work in the US, and in the large-scale solo presentation, Moon Blows Close at Künstlerhaus Stuttgart (2016).

Image: Christian Flamm

Photography: Markus Milcke