Can't Cheat Karma

19/01/2025

Hi, quick update... we've got a few things planned for the new year. Currently working with a brilliant young Mancunian poet to put together their debut collection of poems to be published as a limited edition pamphlet. More info soon!

21/10/2024

We executive produced this great new tape from Scotland based hauntological krautrock artist Singh. Get in touch if you'd like a copy! Xx

13/10/2024

CCK003 is the debut EP from q***r garage punx Grunt Work available on tape from 20/10/24

14/06/2024

Tomorrow!!!!

27/04/2024

All NEVER WORK zines, books, badges now available from our bandcamp shop -

17 track album

22/03/2024

Forthcoming on CCK in 2024 -

Singh - Spirit (tape/digital)

Fidge Bibblyotek - Significant Nothings; Selected Creative Works 2012-2024 (book)

Austerity - Monumental Bonus Time (tape/digital)

DOLE FAM - Hommages Supplémentaires (tape/digital)

NEVER WORK #4 (zine)

Alphaville Quartet - EP (tape/digital)

20/02/2024

Fresh off the press... we now have more stock of issues 1-3 of Never Work zine
3 quid each or all 3 for 8 incl. UK postage. DM to buy! PEACE X

15/02/2024

Zines! Get in touch to buy! X

All three zines now back in stock. 3 quid each or all three for 8 quid including postage. DM if u want one. PEACE ###X

16/12/2023

New tape available now. Tenner including postage.

Holy Clang – Hook, Line, Sinker (tape album)
(cat. no. - CCK002)

Side A -
1/ Leap Seconds
2/ Concentrate
3/ Don't Forget
4/ Slip and Slide
5/ No Evolution
6/ The Doctor
7/ Regression Session
8/ Oppose This
9/ Clean Up
10/ Disrupt
11/ Now Yr Talkin'
12/ Too Wavy

Side B -
1/ What Fresh Hell Is This?
2/ Headshrinker
3/ Listening Booth
4/ Vivienne
5/ Dog Track
6/ Calm Before the Kill
7/ Wicked Flee
8/ Ghost
9/ Eat Your Brains, Gain Your Knowledge

'Hook, Line, Sinker' collects the first five EPs by Brighton-based post-punk bass/drums two-piece; Holy Clang. This release on Can't Cheat Karma Records is available as a gorgeous limited edition cassette tape.

If punk-rock means three chords and the truth, Holy Clang evolve this dictum with their unique DIY racket. A more accurate appraisal of their work would be; a rhythm section you need an enigma machine to understand (and the truth).

One of the things I love most about post punk is that it contains all the passion, subversion and dissent of punk rock, but the rebellion isn't curtailed in the music itself. There is even room for a little virtuosity as long as it serves the song and isn't simply masturbatory narcissism. Post punk is a vessel which won't die, and with each new example, the church evolves. There's plenty of dissent and spitting fury in Holy Clang's music, but there is real boundary pushing playing on display too.

Sometimes the hyperactive drumming brings to mind Tony Allen, occasionally it veers into the far whiter but no less impressive territory of bands like Don Caballero. The bass is wonky, angular, and drenched in fuzz. Thomas's scattergun and frantic approach to the instrument creates a sound which fizzes with bubbling energy and Holy Clang's compositions accordingly revel in the raw excitement of primal innovation

The vocals are basic and un-adorned, and delivered in a brilliantly deadpan manner which has it's roots inescapably forged out of the sprechgesang experiments of Mark E Smith and the first wave of post-punk dilettantes.

The combination of these elements results in a wiry loud groove-laden assault peppered with casually thrown in octave notes and frenetic, insistent polyrhythms. The music on display here is interesting, and challenging, but you can fu***ng dance to it. It almost feels like Holy Clang's sound is involuntarily cerebral; a musical sudoku appealing to the hips and – against their better judgement – the mind. The artistic territory explored in these songs is situated somewhere in-between fellow bass/drums duos Traps and Instant Bin.

It is genuinely awe-inspiring how Thomas and Dave manage to wring so much musical content out of such a basic set-up. Sometimes the presence of enforced limitations can lead artists to be more innovative and creative, and that is certainly the case here with the duo's maximalist-minimalism creating more noise and brimming with more ideas than it has any right to.

Holy Clang will appeal to fans of - fuzz, groove, noise, math, punk, awkward dancing, Minutemen, Shellac, The Fall, The Ex, Dischord Records (Faraquet, Nation of Ulysses, Fugazi, E.D. Sedgwick), Devo, Oxes, ESG, Delta 5, Blurt, Gang of Four, Lightning Bolt, Public Image Ltd, !!!, Sonic Youth, No Wave NYC, the first Rapture EP, Black Flag

PRESS -
“Holy Clang are an impressive live band. Imagine Steve Albini on Adderall at a provincial discotheque with sticky floors, populated by teenagers drunk on luke-warm tins of Carlsberg and trading hand-jobs in the bathroom cubicles”
- Jez Campbell

“A new two piece of bass and drums delivering agit jazz punk vibes. The longer the set goes on, the better these newcomers get”
- Cris Watkins

PERSONNEL -
Thomas Himsworth – Bass/Vocals/Synth
Dave Osborne – Drums/Production

11/12/2023

The debut Grunt Work single is out now. Feminist garage punk feat. members of Austerity, Mules, Ünhang, and Be Kind Cadaver. FFO Hot Snakes, Nirvana, Surf Bort, Amyl and the Sniffers, the Hives etc. Tape EP will be out on CCK next year. Have a listen!

Debut release from Brighton based garage punk five piece Grunt WorkSong recorded at Southsea Sound Video made by 7000 TreesContact:[email protected] in...

06/12/2023

Holy Clang tape out Friday, launch party at the Pipeline...

HOLY CLANG ALBUM LAUNCH!

16/11/2023

New collection of short stories by Fidge Bibblyotek. Physical pamphlets in the new year, PDF is here -

https://drive.google.com/file/d/17SkaRpcW3C4H8HHGr7ryBc-rQ8tVekZ1/view?usp=sharing

14/11/2023

We're excited to announce that CCK003 will be a limited edition tape by Brighton DIY punx; Grunt Work (members of Mules, Ünhang, Austerity, Be Kind Cadaver). Grunt Work play ramshackle, noisy, feminist, garage punk. They've been compared to early Nirvana, Hot Snakes, The Hives, and Devo. The EP will feature seven songs which were recorded live this autumn by Tim Greaves (You Me and the Atom Bomb) at Southsea Sound Studio. The tape is scheduled for release in April 2024. Details soon. PEACE XX

03/11/2023

There are still a few copies of the Never Work zine book available from Difficult Art and Music - https://difficultartandmusic.bandcamp.com/merch/never-work-a-book-by-fidge-bibliyotek

24/10/2023

We've now got a v limited number of 'Deux Homages' the latest DOLE FAM tape (released by DAAM). I'm doing a bundle deal... for 15 quid you'll get the DOLE FAM tape plus all three Singh (synthy krautrock from Scotland) albums, including UK postage. Get on it before they sell out! X