Lunchtime concerts can be fusty affairs with right-thinking people nodding in agreement with both themselves and the music.

To spice things up for a series of lunchtime concerts at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, innovative ceramic artist Keith Harrison blew up a replica of Keith Moon’s drum kit and put sound loops through porcelain in the museum’s circulation department.

He calls his shows “disruptions” rather than “events” because he is interested in exploring how electrical energy can change material, how clay can be transformed from its raw state using industrial and domestic electrical systems, and the hidden processes of change.

“I want to bring the magic of that into the public arena,” he says.

He once made an enormous carpet of naan bread for Camden Arts Centre and, when the dough and spices were heated underneath, the smell became unbearable for the audience.

Harrison’s final lunchtime concert idea for the V&A – to rope fellow Brummies Napalm Death into a lunchtime concert – was unbearable for the museum management.

“It was one disruption too far,” he says, speaking to The Guide from his current base in the South West, following the completion of his six-month ceramics residency at the V&A.

The grindcore band were due to perform in the Europe Galleries “through an experimental sculptural sound system” which would “potentially disintegrate as the performance progresses”.

The gallery said “the high level of decibels generated by the concert would damage the historic fabric of the building”. 

So credit to Bexhill’s De La Warr Pavilion for resuscitating the medley of live performance and metaphorical change.

Napalm Death will now play an entire show in the main auditorium, through 72 five-metre speaker boxes, tiled in-situ and made of blue and yellow ceramics.

“It’s been a mammoth task to get all the speaker boxes ready,” admits Harrison, who once did a live “firing” in response to the restoration of The Grand Hotel after the IRA bombing at the Permanent Gallery in Brighton.

Napalm Death’s ferocious power and Birmingham roots attracted Harrison. 

“If I was going to see what the sound of a band might do to a structure then they were always the band I had in mind.”

As to what Napalm’s tunes might do to the artwork, Harrison is cagey.

“There will be a certain amount of disintegration in terms of tiles and vibration, which could well have an impact on the boxes in terms of their structure.

“I’ve filled the top row of speakers, which are facing up, with liquid clay. That will start to bubble and – I don’t know if erupt is quite the word – start to react to the sound being put through it.”

The health and safety meetings were long and an area around the speakers will be cordoned off.

It’s no coincidence if the idea reminds of the state-led blowing up of unloved, post-war, modernist tower blocks in the 1990s.

Harrison was raised on the high-rise Bustleholme Mill estate in West Bromwich.

“It’s not going to be as instantaneous as those demolitions but there is an aspect of that in the show and of regeneration and what that might suggest.”

He’s interested in how the term “regeneration” relates to generators and electrical energy.

“There is a bleak beauty in a lot of these buildings and tower blocks. It was people with an ideology to make people’s lives better. It was done for all the right reasons; the reality didn’t match up unfortunately.

He loved their optimism. “I think I’m optimistic for my work as well. I have great ideas even if I don’t quite get there.”

He contrasts the tower blocks’ success to that of the De La Warr – another product of modernism.

“My experience of living with modernism was secondary. It had the ideology and spirit but without the quality of materials and longevity. So the De La Warr is perfect because of the clash of two different aspects of modernism.”

  • BUSTLEHOLME: Napalm Death and Keith Harrison plays De La Warr Pavilion, Marina, Bexhill on Friday, November 29. Doors 7pm. Bustlehome 8pm.
    Finish approx 9.10pm.
  • Tickets are SOLD OUT. Call 01424 229111 for info