Creedle

Silent Weapons For Quiet Wars (Headhunter/Cargo)
by Joshua Brown

Like the Dog Star traversing the night sky among dimmer, more distant suns, the young adept makes his way through the crowded sidewalks of the city. The spiritual strain of moving through all the filth and desperation has placed a throbbing pain between his eyes and an annoying kink in his lower back. Neither eclipses the joy of anticipation he feels, entering an obscure alley which houses his secret temple of worship. Three knocks on the steel door heralds his arrival and once inside he beholds, for the third time, the sapphire pyramid on which his hands are again to be placed. As its power surges through and all about him, he experiences this time, not a feeling of parting with the physical to soar through the ether, but rather a sensation of lingering – his attention focused on a task which is laid out for him in an audio-visual sequence. This task he encodes in a musical work, fittingly entitled Secret Weapons For Quiet Wars (Headhunter/Cargo), with the CD insert as a visual guide. His mission fulfilled, he is confident that someone within the underground rock ‘n’ roll community will crack the code and carry on the Great Work.

Is this CD review a bit over-dramatized? Absolutely, but at least it’s unorthodox. The same can be said about the new LP by San Diego’s post-hardcore avant-gardesters Creedle. While they have surely studied the Crimson bible, they fall short of being a King Crimson for the ’90s. Not for lack of trying, but for their inability or unwillingness to come up with their own “21st Century Schizoid Man.”