Maximes 2 is “about” a real place, yeah. It’s an ode, a sequel, to the Maximes nightclub in Wigan. Maximes doesn’t strictly exist anymore, having been put up for rent a few years back, though it does live on in the name of a few club nights in the area. The musical content of the spot also vicariously lives on through the strangely back-in-fashion genres of happy hardcore and gabber, not to mention the more localised donk scene. “Everyone had the cdrs, some Bonkers ones too,” so says Jacob Samuel, a Klein collaborator and collagist in his own right, of the Maximes experience.
To recap: Maximes was a real place, a real scene, a real thing. Maximes 2 is none of those, existing as just another shaving within the digital flotsam, but it feels no less real for it. Because reality is easily flingable. Reality is extremely easy to doubt within the four walls of a sweaty rave; or, rather, what goes on is best left to the imagination. Jacob Samuel’s communique conflates reality with what might have been (or perhaps what was perceived as real), presenting a contorted, funhouse-mirror image of the ‘ardcore days. The past collapses into now. Imaginary music for imaginary (read: as good as real) places.
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