Melbourne instrumental quartet Surprise Chef will release their fifth studio album, Frogs In A Pond, through Concord Jazz on October 23, with the funk-driven Leg Day providing the first preview.
by Paul Cashmere
Melbourne instrumental quartet Surprise Chef have announced their fifth studio album, Frogs In A Pond, for October 23 through Concord Jazz, marking their first release for the label. The band has also released Leg Day, a funk-led instrumental that introduces an album conceived as a continuous 40-minute suite inspired by the strange, atmospheric world of Italian giallo cinema.
Frogs In A Pond represents a further development of the approach Surprise Chef have refined since forming in Melbourne. The group has built its reputation around tightly arranged instrumental music drawing from soul, funk, hip-hop, vintage film scores and library music, but the new album was constructed with an unusually deliberate set of limitations.
The four core members, guitarist Lachlan Stuckey, keyboardist Jethro Curtin, bassist Carl Lindeberg and drummer Andrew Congues, regularly rehearse at the band’s Coburg home and studio, College of Knowledge. For this record, however, their regular Thursday sessions initially became discussions around how to create a single piece of music rather than conventional standalone songs.
They developed what they called The Palette, a framework covering musical ideas, instrumentation and the limitations of their eight-track tape recorder. The intention was to create the soundtrack to a film that does not exist.
That concept led them towards the Italian film composers of the 1960s and 1970s, particularly Piero Umiliani and Piero Piccioni. Their work on films including Camille 2000 and Colpo Rovente became reference points as Surprise Chef explored a smaller ensemble approach rather than the orchestral scale traditionally associated with cinema.
Frogs In A Pond was recorded during a continuous nine-day session, with most of the performances captured live and only minimal overdubbing. The instrumentation includes drums, electric bass, electric and nylon acoustic guitars, piano, clavinet, ARP Odyssey, vibraphone and tuned wood blocks.
The sequencing was treated as an essential part of the recording. Rhythmic and melodic motifs recur through the album, sometimes transferred between instruments, giving the 13-track work a connected structure rather than presenting the songs as isolated pieces.
The album’s title also became a description of the recording environment. Surprise Chef spent the session largely removed from the outside world, creating a temporary self-contained community. From that setting came characters and imagery, including The Thief, represented by the cloak-and-dagger frog on the cover. Stuckey found the imagery in a book inherited from his grandfather, which subsequently became part of the album’s visual and conceptual language.
Leg Day provides a more immediate entry point into that world. Built around the band’s established rhythm section and layered instrumental interplay, the track demonstrates the funk foundation beneath the more cinematic ambitions of the new album.
The recording also features Hudson Whitlock, the producer, composer, percussionist and multi-instrumentalist who has worked with the band, while special guest Leon Michels contributes flute to several tracks.
Frogs In A Pond follows Surprise Chef’s 2025 album Superb, which extended the band’s interest in combining its analogue, soul and funk foundations with ideas drawn from contemporary hip-hop production. The record followed Education & Recreation in 2022, which brought the group to a wider international audience through Big Crown Records.
Before that, Surprise Chef established its identity through All News Is Good News and Daylight Savings, developing a sound that grew from the shared musical interests of its members and their preference for analogue recording. Their College of Knowledge studio became central to that process, providing a controlled environment in which the band could develop arrangements collectively.
The group’s international profile has subsequently expanded through touring, festival appearances and support from influential broadcasters and DJs. Their music has been heard by audiences at Reeperbahn, Desert Daze, Pickathon and London Calling, while their work has also attracted attention from figures including Questlove, KCRW, KEXP and Gilles Peterson.
Their instrumental catalogue has crossed into hip-hop and commercial culture as well. Surprise Chef material has been sampled in collaborations involving Rich Brian and Ghostface Killah, while the band’s music has been used for a Pepsi Super Bowl Halftime commercial.
The move to Concord Jazz places Frogs In A Pond within a label environment with a long history in jazz and instrumental music, while Surprise Chef continue to operate from the creative base they established in Coburg. The album’s construction suggests that the band’s next stage is less about abandoning its established sound than examining how far that sound can be developed through arrangement, sequencing and atmosphere.
Surprise Chef will preview Frogs In A Pond with Australian shows during September and October, including a release-day performance at Quadraphonic Club in Brunswick. The band will then return to North America for another tour, marking its fourth extended run across the United States.
Australian Tour Dates
Thursday 24 September, Sydney, Phoenix Central Park
Friday 25 September, Sydney, Crowbar
Thursday 15 October, Brisbane, The Brightside
Friday 16 October, Bangalow, A&I Hall
Friday 23 October, Melbourne, Quadraphonic Club
Sunday 25 October, Melbourne, The Tote
Surprise Chef, Frogs In A Pond, Out October 23 Via Concord Jazz
Inside Voice
Outside Voice
Frog Technique
Knuckle Sandwich
I Love What You’ve Done With The Place
Get Well Soon
Rupture And Repair
The Reno
Tadpoles
Leg Day
Where The Crows Fly Backwards
Omnipresence
Frogs In A Pond
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