"In the quarter century since the members of AALY Trio were last in the studio together there have been countless performances and albums made by the core members of the band. The remarkable parallels that existed between the improvised music scenes in Stockholm and Chicago from 1995 to 2000 extended well beyond the collaboration with AALY and me. Those circumstances are no longer the same due to the shifting sands of the international scene: artists, venues, record labels, writers, radio DJs, audiences, and funding all coming and going. 

Despite these challenges and changes, no one who is creative can ever stand still. What path that started in the 1980s would lead a teenager growing up in the north of Sweden, in a town of less
by the Art Ensemble of Chicago? And how did that path continue over four decades to bring him face to face with Roscoe Mitchell to record duo music for the Ni-Vu-Ni-Connu label, in Madison, Wisconsin during the spring of 2024; playing with the same person who recorded “Lebert Aaly” with the AEOC in Paris during 1971, when Gustafsson was seven years old? And how did that path also include the realization of issuing Bengt Frippe Nordström’s solo music, heard by Gustafsson at roughly the same time he first listened to Albert Ayler, also on the Ni-Vu-Ni-Connu label, in 2023?

Perhaps Eric Dolphy was wrong when he said, “When you hear music, after it’s over, it’s gone in the air. You can never capture it again.” Because the path Mats Gustafsson began in Umeå forty years ago- which includes five blazing years with the musicians on the album in your hands and everything mentioned above- is called music. This path doesn’t go in a circle. It’s a curve, ever upward, always asking you to learn. The music on Sustain makes this evident, another basecamp on the ascent. Mats, Kjell, and Peter are in different creative territory now than in 2000, but with the rapport still there, and still blazing." - Ken Vandermark