Back from the brink

>> Chicago avant-jazz group HIM retreat from the edge of weird

by BOSS SAMBOSA

Midnight is a fairly untraditional hour to do an interview, but as I begin to speak with HIM founder Doug Scharin, I realize he's a bit of an odd-bird.

"Hey dude. Hold on a sec," he begins, sounding either exhausted or incurably chill. "Hey Tommy!" he screams. "When you going to the club?" He returns to the phone: "Hey man, can we do this later? Umm... Hold on a sec. No, lets do this now."

Scharin is at the core of the nine-piece art-jazz-dub outfit called HIM (an acronym for His Imperial Majesty--a nod to Rastafarian prophet Haile Selassie). The latest offering from the group, New Features, is a thick, polyrhythmic, crisp, studio-enhanced groove album, a departure from his previous band June of 44.

"It became really frustrating with June of 44," he says. "We felt that we reached the end of the road, that we couldn't express our ideas anymore." And so, HIM was born. First running parallel to June of 44, then continuing after its collapse, for four albums HIM itself was paralyzed by a revolving door of well-respected guests (including Tortoise's Jeff Parker and Isotope 217's Rob Mazurek), who were too devoted to their main projects.

"It was really good to work with those guys. They pretty much made the Sworn Eyes album sound they way it did, but it's really good to have a devoted group now. It really surprises me--we're a nine piece, but we can still schedule a tour."

HIM is one of many Chicago avant-jazz groups turning back to slightly more traditional jazz presentation. Two years ago, the city was cresting on the absolute edge of weird, now the scene seems to have pulled itself from the brink.

"I'd probably agree with you there," says Scharin. "It has something to do with saturation, but I've only been here for four years, so I couldn't say for sure. One cool thing I have noticed here is that there isn't as much 'jazz traditionalism' as in New York. Here you've got jazz people in the indie-rock clubs and vice versa."

"Is that why you left New York?"

"No. I left for a love interest and because I got evicted. We were living there illegally and two days after I left the place burned down. Really fucked up man!"

With Alex Blake at the Centro Social Espanol on Wednesday Aug. 1, 9pm, $8-10