Team Sleep features Deftones vocalist Chino Moreno and his longtime friend, guitarist Tom Wilkinson. Along with DJ Crook, the product brings the moodiness of Deftones' later work (their song "Teenager" has been a widely-used but apt comparison point) with little of its hardness, and builds it all from drum loops.
However, that was back in 2001, until someone leaked the album to the Internet, causing the band to quickly shelve it. Since then, the songs have changed considerably and the stable of guest musicians has grown to include Mike Patton, Melissa Auf Der Mar, Zach Hill (Hella), Mary Timony (Helium), and Rob Crow (of Pinback, Heavy Vegetable, Thingy, and probably three other projects started during the nap I took before finishing this review. The man loves to work).
First song "Ataraxia" builds from electronic drums and growling bass, with some bright guitar picking and a bit of piano, before hitting the wall-of-guitar melodrama that Deftones have used in songs like "Be Quiet and Drive" or "Minerva". "Your Skull Is Red" features pulverizing drumming from Zach Hill, but i'ts indiscriminate guitar sludge with a lot of atmosphere but no hook. That and "Live From the Stage" are no more than jam sessions, and the finely-tuned gloss of tracks like "Ataraxia" shows those songs up. Even "Blvd. Knights", with its ill-fit tempo-changing climax and verse parts audible under the heavy guitars in the chorus, point towards hasty execution.
"Ever (Foreign Flag)", however, steps further into ambience while keeping the melodrama and electronic beats. It builds upon the gentler influences beneath Deftones' material (early Cure and Depeche Mode, who they've both covered) but it's far enough removed from Deftones to really justify this project. "Ever Since WWI" is another success, a slow strum that's cathartic without ever dialing up the distortion, likely because of Zach Hill's peerless bass drum action.
Calling Rob Crow a "guest" is misleading; he takes lead vocal duties for four songs, and most of those sound markedly like Pinback. He croons over "Princeton Review", a gentle guitar strum with a skittering loop that shifts tone with an ominous percussive breakdown. Mary Timony is featured on the dour "Tomb of Liegia", an atonal dirge that's the low point of the record.
Unfortunately, while none of the guests are phoning it in (the visible ones, anyway), they never learn much from each other. Even though he's sharing time with Moreno on "Our Ride to the Rectory", Crow's parts could just as easily be cut'n'pasted from one of his own songs. "Elizabeth" is similarly stuck in Pinback mode, though it's spiced up by an unbelievably brief moment of blistering electronic drums. I never thought I'd be calling Team Sleep "conservative," but holding back the harsher elements in this track to seven whole seconds almost proves my point: The artists here could have taken more chances, because this album hints at a fascinating and rewarding listen.
I say "hints" because those moments are few on a record that just drifts by the listener's ears. It's short on hooks, but it isn't necessarily aimless just restrained. It's no surprise that one of the bands' songs was used on the Matrix Revolution; these songs are appropriate soundtracks to hyper-real, stylized encounters. Even the lyrics to the beat-driven misstep "King Diamond" view a male/female encounter in video game terms, with it's "start...restart" shouting and subtle variations. It's the kind of music for which Windows Media Player visualizations were made. If this had been released in 2001, it could have followed the market of electronic-dabbling modern rock compiled on the original Matrix soundtrack, and ran towards success. Today, it's background noise, make-out music for teenagers with lip piercings and caked eyeliner. I respect their effort to blend genre, and while Team Sleep is executed with taste, it's without the risks that should accompany any project calling itself "experimental."
