Henning Lundkvist certainly intrigues the mind with his release The End of a System of Things (ESCUDRE010) for Komplott Records in Sweden, the same label that has released Ronnie Sundin. As befits a release with such an apocalyptic title, the sound-work presents in about 30 minutes an alarming and baffling collage of voices and music, some of which are culled from old movies and radio broadcasts, to suggest a vision of the end of the world assisted by nuclear missiles or warfare generally. Hysterical men and women deliver themselves of exasperated bellows as they attempt to come to terms with intolerable circumstances. The enclosed booklet presses much the same buttons, using puzzling stills and photographs that are steeped in cold-war paranoia; at least one of them is taken from that ghastly overblown Hollywood disaster movie that purports to have an ecological conscience, The Day After. There's also a printed narrative text to do with escape and urban terror that is infused with a dark poetic gloom. It's yet to be revealed whether there is any deeper metaphysical meaning implied by this brief sonic statement, but its opacity and general ambivalence makes it a welcome alternative to the plodding rigidities of a movie like I Am Legend.
