What with a little band called Deftones to schedule sessions around, it took singer Chino Moreno’s Team Sleep almost five years to turn their dream of releasing an album into a reality.
From the outside, the Spot—Deftones’ rehearsal space, recording studio, and all-purpose HQ—looks like just another sleepy business housed in a dingy industrial park in West Sacramento, California. Inside, however, it’s a veritable hive of activity, with people noisily involved in everything from drilling holes in the ceiling to watching something called The Adventures of Anal Woman on a laptop. Trying to find a quiet place in which to discuss the new, self-titled album from his Team Sleep side project, Deftones frontman Chino Moreno leads Revolver out to a makeshift lounge area in the band’s rehearsal room.
Briefly looking up from his umpteenth round of Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2005, Deftones guitarist Stephen Carpenter calls out a friendly word of advice as Moreno closes the door: “Yo,” he says with a laugh, “be sure to ask homeboy why it took him five years to finish his fucking record!”
With the exception of Guns N’ Roses’ still unreleased Chinese Democracy, it’s hard to think of another recent studio project that’s taken longer to see the light of day than Team Sleep. Initially conceived back in 2000 as a lo-fi studio collaboration between Moreno, guitarist Todd Wilkinson, and turntable wizard DJ Crook, the group’s debut was actually slated for release in 2002, before Internet leaks and professional distractions caused it to be shelved indefinitely.
Since then, the record has been the constant subject of rumor and conjecture among Deftones fans, and more than a few were beginning to wonder if they’d ever hear the completed work. “People have been like, ‘What the f*ck is wrong with you guys? When are you gonna put out the record?’ ” says Moreno, shaking his head.
Though many won’t truly believe it until they actually hold the CD in their hands, Maverick Records is releasing Team Sleep this May. The record is worth the wait: A hypnotic mind fuck of an album, Team Sleep blends majestic swaths of guitar with junkyard beats, eerie samples, and haunting vocal melodies. Comparisons to early-Eighties Cure or British noise sculptors My Bloody Valentine wouldn’t be off the mark, but the record has a grubby charm (and weirdness) that’s all its own.
What Team Sleep is not, however, is a metal record—and that’s just fine by Moreno. “A lot of the early Deftones shit was really aggressive, which had to do with me being young and pissed off,” he explains. “And as you get older, you see things in a bigger frame, and you realize that everybody’s not out to fuck you. And even if they are, you don’t feel like screaming about it all the time. But as much pussy shit as Deftones fans will put up with, they want to hear some hard shit, you know what I mean? So with every Deftones record, I’ve gotta bring some of that out of me. With Team Sleep, I don’t feel like I have to do that. I’m operating with a clean slate.”
Moreno and Wilkinson met in high school, where they bonded over Bad Brains’ Rock for Light album. “We used to listen to that shit in his room all the time,” Moreno remembers. “We would sit around going, ‘Why isn’t this the biggest band in the world?’ ” Their musical partnership began not long after.