Danbury News Times, CT
May 27 2005

Moreno goes ethereal on Team Sleep album
By David Friedman
NEWS-TIMES MUSIC WRITER

Team Sleep, featuring Deftones frontman Chino Moreno, will headline
May 30 at the Webster Theater in Hartford. Meanwhile, the fifth
studio album by Deftones, which is yet untitled, was recorded
primarily at the Carriage House in Stamford and is tentatively due
out in the fall. Additional tracks were recorded at a studio in the
band`s home city of Sacramento, Calif.
Deftones frontman Chino Moreno was touring with his other band, Team
Sleep, last week when he planned to see “Star Wars: Episode III –
Revenge of the Sith.” In fact, he was eager to find out whether the
new film tied the epic series together right.
This was no surprise coming from Moreno considering the great detail
he and his Team Sleep band mates went to in perfecting each layer of
each song on their self-titled debut, released May 10. The process of
crafting songs began 11 years ago, along the way involving three
producers, two guest vocalists, re-recording and tracks leaking at
one point.

When Team Sleep plays May 30 at the Webster Theater in Hartford, fans
will notice – if they haven’t already – that the band’s sound is
quite different from that of Deftones.

The main inspiration?

“Maybe like My Bloody Valentine type of stuff,” Moreno said in a May
19 interview from New Orleans, La. “I guess they call it shoegazing.
It’s more of a strumming guitar style. Deftones is more like an
aggressive, crunch-style guitar or chugging guitar. This band doesn’t
really know how to chug. So as opposed to doing that, it’s more a
washed guitar sound. Our influence is obviously by bands like My
Bloody Valentine, Smashing Pumpkins and things like that.”

Though Moreno performs most of the vocals himself on tour, the album
also features vocals from Pinback’s Rob Crow and Helium’s Mary
Timony, Team Sleep guitarist Todd Wilkinson said in a May 18
interview from Austin, Texas. The band’s lineup also includes
turntablist-drum programmer Crook, drummer Zach Hill and bassist Rick
Verrett.

“The initial recordings were all done at home and a lot of the stuff
that was actually on the record was recorded at home,” Wilkinson
said. “And then we did stuff in the studio. So for a lot of it, Crook
would do the drum machines, Zach would do the live drums and I’d play
the keyboards, guitars, bass and stuff. So that’s kind of the way it
worked out. Then Rick played bass and keyboards on some of the songs
too.”

Born June 20, 1973, Moreno grew up in Sacramento, Calif. Early on, he
got into breakdancing and listened to electronic-flavored hip-hop by
Afrika Bambaataa, new wave music, Depeche Mode and pretty much any
act that mixed big beats with melodies. Moreno was 15 when he formed
the alternative metal act Deftones.

Wilkinson, born Sept. 24, 1974, grew up in Los Angeles. He listened
to his older brother’s favorite bands, the Circle Jerks, Bad Brains
and Suicidal Tendencies; old school hip-hop by Boogie Down
Productions and Eric B & Rakim; and his mother’s R&B favorites that
included Bill Withers, Al Green and Michael Jackson.

“I didn’t really discriminate,” Wilkinson said. “I just liked all of
that. So I listened to a lot of different stuff. Plus, there were a
lot of different cultures there too. My friends would be Armenian or
something and I would have some Armenian music at home. When you’re
around all that stuff, you’ve gotta respect everything.”

Wilkinson started playing bass around the time that his brother was
playing in a punk band. After moving to Sacramento, though, he became
friends with Moreno and Cheng and lived in an apartment with them.

“I don’t know whose guitars they were, but we had some jacked up
guitars there,” Wilkinson recalled. “That’s probably when I first
started playing a lot – when I was 17.”

Deftones began to taste success and built a name for themselves,
eventually touring with Ozzy Osbourne and Korn. The band scored radio
and MTV hits with the songs “My Own Summer (Shove It)” and “Be Quiet
And Drive (Far Away)” in 1997. In 2000, Deftones went platinum-plus
and earned a Grammy for their “White Pony” album, which included the
No. 3 hit “Change.”

All the while, Wilkinson and Moreno were recording guitar tracks and
exchanging tapes, which they’d been doing since 1994. In the
mid-’90s, Crook – whose real name is John Molina – came into the
picture. Hill and Verrett would follow.

But why did it take Team Sleep all these years to release an album?
Why didn’t the band even have a name until 2001? And why didn’t
Wilkinson play in any band until now?

“I just didn’t want to be in a band,” said Wilkinson, who worked for
a printing business, as a high school teacher and extensively with
youth on probation. “I didn’t think a lot of people that were making
music (considered it) any different than a basketball league. People
didn’t really seem to respect it a lot. And honestly I think a lot of
musicians were just in it for the (sex). There’s nothing wrong with
(sex), but if you’re gonna make music, make music. I just was exposed
to a lot of people being involved with (it) for the wrong reason at a
pretty young age. I kind of learned from that.”

After recording songs with producers Terry Date, Ross Robinson and
Greg Wells between 2001 and 2003, Team Sleep had a batch of songs
they wanted to release. Deftones fans had already heard of Team Sleep
from Moreno mentioning the band in interviews. Plus, a pair of
Deftones songs – “Teenager” and “Lucky You” – originated as Team
Sleep tracks.

Moreno said he enjoys playing all of the Team Sleep songs in concert
– especially “Your Skull Is Red” because of the loud, noisy guitars.

What’s the song about?

“You know, it’s more imagery if anything,” Moreno said. “Ÿ’Your skull
is red, your lungs are red, your fingernails are red, your clothes
are red, everything is red.’ It’s pretty much self-explanatory.
There’s not anything really deep behind it. … Maybe there is. I
don’t know.”

Several songs make reference to cults, including “Foreign Flag” and
b-side “Kool Aid Party,” based on the 1978 Jonestown Massacre in
which 913 people died in a mass suicide after drinking Kool Aid laced
with arsenic.

“That was the reference,” Moreno said. “(It was) just intrigue –
something more interesting than getting yelled at when you’re a kid
or your getting your heart broken. It’s something more interesting
than that, which is usually all you hear in rock music these days,
you know?

“I just hope (fans) are entertained, mostly by the songs, what’s
going on, what we’re trying to do, the sound,” Moreno added. “I mean,
there’s a lot of mixes of electronic and live drum (stuff) that’s
pretty sick. So, to me, it’s just a good mash-up of all the (stuff) I
grew up listening to. Hopefully they can get something out of that
other than just banging heads or moshing or whatever.”

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress