Surprise Chef’s Frogs In A Pond Out October 23 on Concord Jazz

Surprise Chef’s Frogs In A Pond Out October 23 on Concord Jazz
Australian Instrumental Quartet Inspired By Italian Giallo Cinema + ‘60s/70s European Film Composers to Create New Album as Them

Listen To “Leg Day”: https://i.surprise-chef.com/frogsinapond

Announce October-November North American Tour Dates 

August 21, 2026 — Australian quartet Surprise Chef live and breathe music together.  Three members of the band share a house in Coburg, outside of Melbourne, which is also home to their self-built, analog College of Knowledge studio.  Their closeness, honed over a decade of playing together, is felt in every note.  For their fifth studio album Frogs In A Pond (out October 23), and first release as a newly signed artist to Concord Jazz, they bring their oft-described “cinematic” sound to new heights, with a lush, intricately and beautifully crafted 40-minute suite.  They were particularly inspired by Italian giallo cinema of the 1960s and ‘70s, an approach to film scoring that relished in the avant-garde, embracing the strange and mysterious.  It’s an invitation from Surprise Chef to sit down, unplug and listen for a while, and take a journey into the dark unknown.  

Today Surprise Chef has shared the funk-studded “Leg Day,” the first preview of the new album. Says the band: “Leg Day is the record’s requisite toe-tapper…a tune of attitude, belief and determination for your amphibian exercise regimen.” They’ve also announced a fall North American tour, just their fourth time traversing the U.S.  See below for the full itinerary, which includes two full shows at National Sawdust in Brooklyn on November 13, Sid the Cat Auditorium in Los Angeles on Halloween, and more. 

Listen to “Leg Day” here: https://i.surprise-chef.com/frogsinapond

Pre-order/ pre-save the album: https://i.surprise-chef.com/frogsinapond 

Surprise Chef gathers at College of Knowledge every Thursday to rehearse. But the gestation of Frogs In A Pond found Surprise Chef taking a different approach.  Thursdays turned into putting up a pot of coffee and sitting around the table, imagining what a crafted suite of music could be.  They created The Palette–a framework of musical ideas and guidelines to adhere to, including an instrumentation that would work within the limitations of their 8-track tape recorder.  Then they dug into their collective influences including the aforementioned Italian film composers–notably Piero Umiliani and Piero Piccioni (including Camille 2000 and Colpo Rovente)–and set to work on creating what they envisioned as a soundtrack to a film that doesn’t exist.

Frogs In A Pond was recorded over a continuous nine day session, almost entirely live with minimal overdubs. The instrumentation includes drums, electric bass, electric guitar, nylon acoustic guitar, piano, clavinet, Arp Odyssey, vibraphone and tuned wood blocks, inspired by European composers’ approach to film in the ‘60s and ‘70s that opted for small ensembles over orchestras.  Great care was taken in the sequencing of the album; establishing a flow was as crucial as each individual song.  Listeners will notice rhythmic and melodic motifs interpolated with different instruments throughout.

Themes emerged during and after the recording process, and the album became a reflection on how people co-exist, an expression of shared human experience.  Surprise Chef says that they also became “frogs in a pond” during the session–a microcosm created in which the band had little contact with the outside world for a brief period.  Characters emerged, including The Thief, represented by the cloak and dagger-clad frog on the album cover.  Guitarist Lachlan Stuckey found cloak and dagger imagery in a book he inherited from his grandfather, and it became one of the characters invoked throughout the suite.  

Frogs In A Pond follows 2025’s Superb, featured on Rolling Stone Australia’s Best Albums of 2025 list.  Surprise Chef have been celebrated across the globe for a sound that has been informed equally by their isolation in Australia as their deep love for soul, hip-hop, funk, David Axelrod and other contemporary instrumental artists including Menahan Street Band. Highlights include support from KCRW, KEXP and Gilles Peterson, praise from Questlove, and festival appearances at Reeperbahn, Desert Daze, Pickathon and London Calling.  They’ve been sampled for a collaboration between 88 Rising’s Rich Brian and Ghostface Killah, and provided the soundtrack to a Pepsi Super Bowl Halftime commercial.  

Surprise Chef is guitarist Lachlan Stuckey, keyboardist Jethro Curtin, bassist Carl Lindeberg and drummer Andrew Congues, with producer/composer/percussionist/multi-instrumentalist Hudson Whitlock also on the recording.  Special guest Leon Michels performs flute on several songs on Frogs In A Pond.  The album was produced by their longtime producer and engineer, Henry Jenkins.

[Photo Credit: Nick McKinlay]

Frogs In A Pond Tracklist:

Inside Voice
Outside Voice
Frog Technique
Knuckle Sandwich
I Love What You’ve Done With The Place
Get Well Soon
Duet
The Reno
Tadpoles
Leg Day
Where The Crows Fly Backwards
Omnipresence 
Frogs In A Pond

Tour Dates:

Oct 30 – San Francisco, CA – Siesta Valley Bowl

Oct 31 – Los Angeles, CA – Sid the Cat Auditorium

Nov 1 – San Diego, CA – Quartyard

Nov 3 – Phoenix, AZ – The Rebel Lounge

Nov 4 – Albuquerque, NM – Sister Bar

Nov 6 – Marfa, TX – Flying Island

Nov 7 – Austin, TX – RADIO/EAST

Nov 9 – Atlanta, GA – Terminal West

Nov 10 – Durham, NC – Stanczyks 

Nov 11 – Washington, D.C. – The Hamilton (The Hamilton Live)

Nov 13 – Brooklyn, NY – National Sawdust – 7:30 Set

Nov 13 – Brooklyn, NY – National Sawdust – 10:30 Set

Nov 15 – Portland, ME – Oxbow Live

Nov 17 – Montreal, Quebec – Theatre Fairmount

Nov 18 – Toronto, ON – The Mod Club

Nov 19 – Ferndale, MI – The Magic Bag

Nov 20 – Cleveland Heights, OH – Grog Shop

Nov 21 – Chicago, IL – Lincoln Hall 

[Photo Credit: Nick McKinlay]