Maximum Ernst

***Five years into their long strange drip, the duo of Maximum Ernst continues to confound, perplex, confuse and refract. Foetal returns yielded guitar/drum scramble in service of improvisational incongruity and radical reimaginings of alt-world smash hits by Faust, Snatch and Easy Cure. A link with Old Master horn maestro and official NYC gem Daniel Carter emerged and soon thereafter a CD and live cassette popped a few eardrums just right, so tight. Further uncharted territories were conquered and liberated as Maximum Ernst furiously and fitfully would-shedded. Woodn’t you? Quit playing. That was the advice of one medical doctor and also a licensed quantum mathematician; but still the daft, disappearing duo of Maximum Ernst gestured, rudely, NAY and thus, this newest release finds itself in your hands, begging for a vigorous clean. “Un Menace Natural” welds together extra-dimensional birdsong, soothing bursts of noise, the timbre of waves on a nonexistent beach and uncanny, unnerving shrieks smeared into beguiling patterns. It builds, it ebbs, it flows, it knows. It knows everything. It’s like if Jon fucking Hassell and Black fucking Dice had a fucking Baby. “Hallmark Of A Crisis Period” is a cut-up tour de force that shivers with unhinged delirium and barely-concealed malice. Imagine William S. Burroughs interpreting a Whitehouse “banger” as being live-mixed by Nurse With Wound. Imagine it, you fool! Despair not, heathen, as Maximum Ernst has imagined it for you.