Ascending is the fourth album from Clear Path Ensemble. In the past, bandleader Cory Champion tracked his first three albums, Clear Path Ensemble (2020), Solar Eclipse (2022), and Black Sand (2025) with a cast of some of the finest jazz musicians in Aotearoa New Zealand. This time around, he chose a different approach: improvising with, and in response to, himself, building a series of layered sonic landscapes recorded over a single day in the same room.

Opening in the spirit of American composers Steve Reich and Laraaji’s late ’70s to early ‘80s minimalist, new-age, and ambient explorations, the album begins with glistening, hypnotic figures on ‘Tongue Rhythm’. Softer and more watery, ‘Train of Thought’ blends lush chords and rolling percussion into a reflective soundscape. Shades of mid-70s Miles Davis and the Pacific sunset visions of Martin Denny and Arthur Lyman flow through ‘Say Something’ and the title track, before the album closes with the celestial memory-lane melodies of ‘Epicycle’.

Recorded solo, with the exception of ‘Saying Something’, featuring piano, Rhodes and vibes courtesy of Champion’s longtime collaborator, Daniel Hayles, Ascending’s six compositions represent a tasteful subtraction from the spiritual/psychedelic jazz, space music, ‘70s ECM jazz-funk, and electronica that coloured Clear Path Ensemble’s first five years.