Some music puts you at a distance and makes you listen harder. Other kinds of music envelop you like a bath or a mood: intimate, without actually conveying any intimacies. The Ground is music of the latter sort: put it on the stereo and you’re guaranteed an hour of exquisite, pulse-slowing, stress-reducing calm, which (here’s the real genius) manages to be soothing without being boring. Gustavsen pulls together lots of different styles, yet it’s always as if they’re filtered through gauze: Jarrett, Satie, gospel, pop, bossa and tango go into the mix, and come out on the other end a virtually indistinguishable series of weightless poignancies. But who would have thought that mildness could be this rich and intense?

Nate Dorward

Cadence, November 2005