The Channel Ceiling — Oversized Drop-Shoulder T-Shirt

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TEE-ART-RB-THG-01-M-BK T-Shirt

Piece

The Channel Ceiling Oversized Drop-Shoulder T-Shirt

$ 2,345.00

Description

On 19 October 1976 Throbbing Gristle played at the opening of Prostitution at the ICA in London, and the matter reached Parliament. Their method was to saturate the channel until the distortion was the signal. The print is those levels running past the top.

A Author

Throbbing Gristle

B Subject

Industrial Music

C Aesthetic

Diagram · Typographic

Exploration

The ICA exhibition gathered photographs from pornographic magazines in which one of them had posed, press cuttings and objects picked up off the street. The group played at the opening.

A member of Parliament called them wreckers of civilisation in the House and the matter was in the papers for weeks, with questions about the public money funding the venue.

The musical method was consistent with that. Instead of keeping the signal within the range the equipment allows, they pushed it above until the device distorted, and what was left — the saturation, the circuit failing — was the material they worked with. They were not using the equipment badly out of incompetence: they were using what equipment does when asked for more than it can give.

A whole genre came out of that, and a label of their own to distribute it, because no record company wanted it.

None of them had musical training and several could not play when they started.

Details