Deftones: Attack Of The Gearheads
By: ChartAttack
www.deftonesworld.com
Call it love, infatuation or just plain dorkiness, but not unlike your fabulous
writer here, the Deftones can be quite the technical geeks when it comes to music.
Discussing the finer points of their latest self-titled album, singer Chino Moreno
and sampling/keyboard dude Frank Delgado got all gear-head-talk with ChartAttack.
They seemed to enjoy it over the typical, “I hear you like emo” shit as seen in
every other article about them including another story I wrote on ’em…
ChartAttack: This effort was quite a while in the making.
Chino Moreno: I normally wouldn’t want to spend a year making a record, but that’s
how it worked out. I think it was worth it.
ChartAttack: “Deftones”…Why go for the self-titled idea a la Rancid, like, four
albums into your career?
Chino Moreno: It wasn’t really an idea we thought of. It was just our only option.
We usually have a title before the record’s done or while we’re working on it and
everyone’s like, “This is it.” The one we did have wasn’t agreed on by everyone so
it was just thrown out. We could only agree on a self-titled album.
Frank Delgado: It was the last option. We had a few titles early on,
but I think it’s pretty fitting.
ChartAttack: Do you think that this album puts anything vastly different into the
Deftones sound?
Chino Moreno: Well, there was nothing really outstanding in the way we set out to
write. It was pretty much the same way as White Pony.
ChartAttack: I’ve heard rumour that you did try something unique this time around though.
Chino Moreno: We didn’t use any tape on this album, which isn’t something we’ve told
too many people. We went all digital. Well, at one point halfway through the project
we dumped it all down to tape and back to digital. We started it all at the rehearsal
space instead of tearing our gear apart and taking it to the studio.
Frank Delgado: We brought Terry [Date, producer] down to our space which is nothing
special but it was more than what we had in the past. It really helped the writing
process to write, record, listen back and check things out.
Chino Moreno: We wanted to try it and we made it work. We used a third of the stuff
from the rehearsal space right on the album.
ChartAttack: You went with digital recording and then switched to tape? That seems weird.
Chino Moreno: We were already on digital, so it was easier to stick with it. We did the
dump down to tape just to get that hiss and warmth… that was it. The only reason we bothered
with it. Digital was just easier when we were working out of the rehearsal space.
Frank Delgado: It was definitely a challenge to get this album coming out the way it did
under the constraints we placed on it.
ChartAttack: Do you think you’ll do something like that again in the future if it was so helpful?
Chino Moreno: Who knows though, maybe for the next album we’ll try to do it all on an 8-track!
We’ll try to be The White Stripes and do it on six track in five days… with one track broken!
