Author of, or participant in, more than 100 albums, Japanese avant-garde titaness Satoko Fujii's latest effort is titled Torrent. It begins – appropriately – with a series of assertive flurries that morph into a torrent of notes: naturally enough, this is the title track.

Once again, we hear Fujii sitting down at the piano without a pre-planned set, conjuring notes and ideas seemingly out of thin air. If there's a theme here, it's of the movement and power of water; pieces bear titles such as ‘Voyage’, ‘Light On the Sea Surface’, ‘Horizon’ and ‘Wave Crest’.

Torrent is, by my calculations, her ninth [completely] solo recording; one of the interesting things about her solo piano work is just how approachable it is in comparison to her ensemble or collaborative albums, and that is definitely the case here. Assertive yet tranquil, sparkling and shadowy, dense yet spacious, crystalline but rock-solid, aloof and earthy, Torrent is free jazz that makes the most of the piano's possibilities and is full of the joys of spontaneity.