Safe Jazz, the imaginary world of Jesse Schuster, will release a new album in March.

Though raised in Minneapolis on indie rock and jazz, Schuster now resides in Los Angeles where he plays in a Fleetwood Mac tribute band, works in social care for a non-profit, and runs an artist collective called Pop Can Records. He launched the label part of the collective in 2020 with the introspective and melancholy solo EP Sigh.

Giddy Up! is Schuster’s second album, following 2018’s frenetic and exuberant Joy, Etc., which was inspired by the sounds of Los Angeles’ beat-maker community. Across nine new songs, he wanted to make something vibrant and playful and brimming with energy.

For most of the life of Safe Jazz, he’s been “really grounded” in the beat scene, Schuster says, but for this project he wanted to make something “less syrupy and slinky.” Over the last couple of years his “creative north star” has migrated towards new rhythms, so the universe he wants to evoke across the album has Four Tet, Flying Lotus, Ross from Friends, Vegyn, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, and Caribou “as constellations.”

Schuster produced a lot of the album from recordings he made traveling and collecting sounds made with friends with a recorder. It made working primarily solo pandemic-style “a little bit more collaborative,” he says, because he could go back through catalogs of recordings made with friends.

Tracklisting

01. Giddy Up!
02. Precious Machinery
03. Unlimited Dada {{ft. Jarina De Marco}}
04. Test Your Chest
05. Sunshine In Reverse
06. Hyphen
07. Mercy In Retrograde
08. Foie Gras Fights Back
09. {{Very}} Precious Machinery {Fun Tubes Edition} video

Giddy Up! LP is scheduled for March 2 release. Meanwhile, you can stream “Precious Machinery,” “Unlimited Dada” featuring Jarina De Marco, and “Test Your Chest” in full below. Pre-order is available here.