Fans warming up to Wintersleep By KEVIN MAIMANN - Special to Sun Media

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An experimental side project based in Halifax, N.S. doesn't sound like that much of a launching point for a successful career.

Guitarist Tim D'Eon and a few of his musical pals were playing in a progressive hard rock band called Contrived when they first started messing around with some ideas on the side. Those ideas evolved into Wintersleep, and not only has the group found success, it's received a Juno nomination for New Group of the Year, which will be awarded in Calgary this April.

D'Eon and company are bringing their artsy, rainy-day rock tunes to the Starlite Room for a sold-out show tonight with local act Team Building supporting the bill.

Chatting on the phone recently, D'Eon recalls the band's beginnings in early 2002 as an unnamed recording project.

"We didn't even know what we were doing," he says.

The band made some demos in drummer Loel Campbell's bedroom, eventually rounded out the lineup and played its first show in April 2002. A year later, Wintersleep's self-titled full-length debut album was released across Canada and was followed up with a second self-titled disc in 2005. Wintersleep is currently touring in support of its third album Welcome to the Night Sky, released in Canada last fall.

One thing that ties all three efforts together is the critical acclaim received across the board. One would be hard pressed to find a bad word written about this band, but D'Eon says he tries not to read too many reviews.

"It's nice to have that pat on the back or whatever," he says modestly.

D'Eon isn't much of a talker, but his mild-mannered nature is hardly a surprise; it seems a perfect fit with Wintersleep's music. And it can't hurt when you're travelling with the same group of guys for a good chunk of the year.

"We're all usually in a pretty good mood," D'Eon says. "It's pretty easy - we're all really good friends."

He says the band hangs out often even off the road, and in fact, four of them are still trucking on with Contrived, which has now released two albums to date.

Aside from Contrived, drummer Campbell and bassist Mike Bigelow have worked in the ever-rotating rhythm section of Toronto's eccentric electro darling Holy F--k, another group generating huge buzz internationally.

Wintersleep should soon be doing the same, as the band is heading to Japan for the first time next weekend, where it will see Welcome to the Night Sky drop in March.

The album was technically released internationally before its physical release date in Canada when the band decided to sell the songs online a week early. Unfortunately, some fans still couldn't wait and the album was leaked two weeks before the official online release.

But D'Eon isn't too torn up about it. He says he prefers to physically own albums, but admits he's got caught up in the digital age himself.

"I definitely think the artwork's very important. I mean, I can understand everyone has IPods now and you can put the artwork on your IPod; personally, I would like to have the physical thing," he says. "But I still put all of my records onto my IPod."