The Beat Surrender

Side projects are an interesting sort. The people involved never want to refer to their bands as such (especially those members that aren’t in more successful outfits), side projects allude to hobbies, passing fancies for artists with too much free time, on the order of actor’s bands such as Dogstar or 30 Odd Foot of Grunts. Some side projects turn into full-fledged bands (Garbage, A Perfect Circle), while others remain in the studio vaults, their names kept alive on message boards by maniacal completeists (Tapeworm, where are you?).

Team Sleep is the long simmering collaboration between DJ Crook, Tom Wilkinson, and Chino Moreno of the Deftones. Described as a guitar based trip-hop group, the group represents Chino’s ambition to make more restrained music. Moreno had said in interviews at the time that “Teenager,” off their defining album White Pony, would fit well within a Team Sleep album. The track, a slow melodic harmony held together by a glitchy beat and an introspective Moreno, was a thematic departure for the band and whet people’s appetite for album’s worth of similar material. They would have to keep waiting.

While fans questioned if this album would ever see the light of day, the Deftones found time to make another record, their self-titled Deftones, which was largely underwhelming and the first speed bump in their career. Now, two years since that album, and various demos floating on the Internet, Team Sleep have finally released their eponymous debut. Ambient soundscapes, drum machine trickery, and the occasional guitar dirge pepper the album.

Some of the songs aren’t too far off from the Deftones formula as long time producer Terry Date oversees the album, and occasional collaborator Ross Robinson also lends a hand. “Your Skull is Red” opens like something off of their self-titled album, with extra reverb in place of John Carpenter’s guitar crunch, until halfway through where it opens up in a wash of drum machine, keyboard, and shoegazer guitar. “Blvd. Nights” is vintage Deftones, in song structure and chord progression, with Chino’s cathartic cooing giving way to his patented wail over a riff taken from the Around the Fur sessions.

The strongest tracks are those that feature outside contributions. Rob Crow’s (of Pinback fame) vocals on “Princeton Review” adds a detachment to the proceedings that Chino has never been able to accomplish, creating in effect a 21st century Slowdive. “Tomb of Liegia” is what Mary Timony would sound like after a half a bottle of cough syrup; slow and methodical while occasionally drifting into dementia.

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