Playing Retention by Daniel Carter & Jim Clouse

On Playing Retention, multi-instrumentalist Daniel Carter and audio engineer, saxophonist, and percussionist Jim Clouse join forces to create a vibrant collection of seven free improvisations. Their music—which features an array of instruments, including tenor, soprano, and alto saxophone, percussion, flute, clarinet, trumpet, and piano—bubbles with curiosity at every turn, embodying a feeling of fearless exploration. And while it was recorded a decade ago, with untethered exploration as its primary focus, it still feels undeniably fresh.

Playing Retention marks Clouse’s first foray into the world of recorded free jazz. Over the past 20 years, he’s made his name running Brooklyn, New York recording studio, Park West Studios, which has garnered a reputation as the hub for avant-garde jazz recording, mixing, and mastering. And before he went into engineering full-time, he’d toured around the city and globe playing straight-ahead jazz. But as he began working with more free jazz artists, he became more entrenched in that music scene, and began to explore it himself.

Carter and Clouse first met when Carter came to Park West Studios to record a different album. Clouse was immediately entranced by Carter’s wide open ears, and his ability to allow the music to take him wherever it led. So the two spent some time jamming together, allowing themselves to follow whatever whims came their way. The goal was to play whatever they were thinking, and not to throw anything away—rather, they wanted to make every musical idea count in some way or another.

That commitment to exploration became the central tenet of Playing Retention. Clouse had never played piano before the pair improvised together, but when they did, he sat at the piano, banging out simple chords while Carter billowed uninhibited melodies elsewhere; Carter brought his characteristic do-it-yourself attitude to the table, seamlessly switching between saxophone and trumpet, clarinet and piano. Freedom of musical choice is what carries Playing Retention: cymbal swishes tingle alongside overblown saxophones while impressionistic piano wanders in an ethereal oscillation. It’s impossible to predict what sound will come next, but that’s what makes Playing Retention electric.

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