Pianist-composer Fuji has been a prolific and consistently adventurous recording artist for the best part of two decades and this latest release charts the ongoing refinement of her artistic voice. There has been considerable stylistic ground covered in her vast discography but the signature sound is also discernible, both in composition and improvisation. Fuji's great strength is narrative clarity amid mutability, for the six mostly lengthy pieces here are suites that play with long silences, shifting configurations of the band, a terse rupture at the end of a phrase, or dramatic swell in an overture, interlude or coda. Nowhere is this more apparent than ‘Stillness’, an engrossing epic in which Ikue Mori's electronics approximate the hiss of a resonating bowl and the scratch-crackle of rogue radio-waves before the brass and piano make delicately spaced ripples of melody that are then bathed by more of Mori's eerie digital hums and sighs. Smith and Tamura skillfully criss-cross muted soprano and basso open horn, which Fuji thickens out with artful left-hand rumblings and curt, brash mid-range stabs. Organically, the opening stream becomes a torrent and typhoon before reclaiming a solemn sanctuary. It is a very bravura display of group dynamics. Fuji is an idiosyncratic composer and player who skillfully draws on avant-garde and classical lexicons while avoiding clichés, and Aspiration is a winning manifesto for the strength of her ideas and the unity, the oneness of the band assembled to bring them to fruition.