HIM - hmmmm
(CD/2LP, hip hip hip)
“World music” has a bad taste in my mouth. Of
course, I listen to my fair share of Ali Farka Touree or Carribbean music,
but all in all the genre has suffered from the constant perpetuation of
Africa as an idyllic motherland where milk and honey flew until the day they
white man invaded and colonized it. There seem to be a lot of people living
on this cliché of the wonderful, colorful, peaceful, harmonic african
village and its spiritual roots and closeness to mother nature. From a
billion of africa / ethno-shops selling overpriced africa-paraphernalia the
dense smell of incensers seems to have evaporated the rational thought, that
this picture is very paternalizing to Africa and keeping it in a stasis
between idyllic motherland and dark continent of famine and civil wars will
not help the billion people living there to better their future. And the
musical genre – actually the longwinded series of CD releases – are not
helping either. Therefore it is good to hear some great and progressive
music come from Africa, like Extra Golden or the latest efforts of The Ex,
even if the musical output is rather so-so.
Him
are taking the whole thing even further. With them “world music” is not
concentrated on a single place or even singe continent, but their vision of
world music spans the whole world, from Europe to Africa and Asia. Him is
being lead by Doug Scharin, an extraordinary drummer I have seen play in the
last two decades in wet squats with post-hardcore bands (June Of 44, Rex)
just the same as listened to pretty far out post-rock trips (notably
”Directions in Music” with Bundy K. Brown and James Warden), and maybe
it needs a mind and mindset like that of a hardcore/punk kid educating
itself to be a truly global citizen and inhabitant of the earth, to really
expand your own mind to encompass such a vast vision. On “hmmmm” –
actually the title is some japanese sign I couldn’t reproduce properly, so
the phonetical transcription has to suffice here – you’ll find yourself
on a trip through afro beat, asian pop, dubby spheres and the overall jazzy
rhythmicality of post-rock. An awesome mixture in many ways.
Some of the tracks take you over a course of thousand
miles in just a few seconds, bringing in a Carribbean beat next to an old,
well known guitar twang or angelical harp appreggios. Some of the tracks
will even make you move through time, be it the oozing aaahhs of seventies
laid back easy listening jazz next to a strictly fusion electro-jazz basis
or a rendition of classical japanese harmonies transferred some decades into
the future. Or a wailing electric guitar mixed into a samba-beat. Of course,
Scharin playing a Rhodes organ on some of the tracks adds to the easy
listening and warm atmosphere this record radiates. As with any kind of
magic it is not so much the single ingredients but the mixture, its ratios,
balances and order, that produce the magic. And Doug Scharin is the
spellmaster riding his magical drumkit.
Well, let’s not get too hippie-fucked up here. I like
my share of utopia and dreams of better worlds, but Hippies make me
aggressive with their know-it-all attitude. (Therefore I prefer Hippie-music
to the people producing it, but that is a different story.) After all, what
this album really seems to be is a warm invitation to open your mind and let
your imagination wander to a dream of a world much better than ours. This
is, almost unbelievably, already the seventh album of Doug Scharin and Him
and each one is a report of his ever more far reaching journey into the
unexplored waters of music.
