VICE Exclusive: Can We All Please Calm Down and Just Listen to Some New Age Jazz for Once?

One good thing about 2015 is that nothing means anything anymore. Music is completely amorphous—hip teens from Omaha slow down elevator music and invent vaporwave. Fat little white kids appropriate the hip-hop vernacular and end up on World Star. Even the indie rock wimps make black metal now. You can pretty much do whatever you want. When Mac Demarco rips off Barry Manilow and bros mosh to it in sold-out venues, you know that the concept of “Cool Music” is gone.

Jeff Oster’s music is not “Cool,” at least not in the sense we’re talking about. The critically-acclaimed smooth jazz trumpet player may be beloved in some circles, but those circles don’t have a lot of overlap with VICE’s audience. But this is 2015, so fuck it. Jeff Oster’s music is fantastic, and the title track for his new album is a tight, minimalist, New Age haze of a tune where trumpets drone over a slow and funky beat. The song features guitarist Nile Rodgers, who’s worked with Daft Punk and David Bowie, among others, in case that name drop will make you a little more comfortable listening to this.

Put on the song, align your chakras, rub your nipples with spirit crystals, and just fucking relax for once. Jeff Oster looks like your friend’s dad who wore a fedora and hit the grav bong too hard—but who knew that guy could also blow a mean-ass horn?