Surprise Chef have spent the best part of a decade making instrumental music that feels as though it should come with opening credits. On their fifth album, Frogs In A Pond, the Melbourne quartet have finally leaned all the way into that instinct, creating a 40-minute suite inspired by the strange, shadowy world of Italian giallo cinema.
Due October 23, Frogs In A Pond is also Surprise Chef’s first album for Concord Jazz, following 2025’s Superb. The first glimpse comes with ‘Leg Day’, a funk-driven introduction to a record built less around individual tracks than the idea of taking the listener through one continuous piece of music.
That approach started around a table at the band’s College of Knowledge studio in Coburg, where three members of Surprise Chef also live. Their usual Thursday rehearsals were temporarily replaced by coffee and conversations about what the next record could become. Eventually they devised what they called The Palette, a set of musical rules that would govern the album, right down to what could realistically fit onto their eight-track tape recorder.
Italian composers Piero Umiliani and Piero Piccioni became important reference points, particularly the adventurous scores that accompanied European cinema during the 1960s and ’70s. Rather than simply borrowing the aesthetic, Surprise Chef began treating Frogs In A Pond as the soundtrack to an imaginary film, complete with recurring themes, characters and musical motifs.
he album was subsequently recorded across nine continuous days, largely live and with minimal overdubs. Drums, bass, electric and nylon-string guitars sit alongside piano, clavinet, Arp Odyssey, vibraphone and tuned wood blocks, with Leon Michels adding flute to several tracks. The relatively small instrumental palette becomes part of the exercise, forcing the band to find different ways of colouring the same musical world.
During those nine days, Surprise Chef effectively became the frogs themselves, sealed inside their own little ecosystem with limited contact with the outside world. The idea gradually expanded into a loose cast of characters, including The Thief, the cloak-and-dagger frog who appears on the album artwork.
It is another turn from a band whose music has always been difficult to squeeze into one particular box. Soul and funk remain part of Surprise Chef’s foundations, alongside hip-hop, David Axelrod and contemporary instrumental groups such as Menahan Street Band, but Frogs In A Pond appears interested in what happens when those influences wander somewhere considerably stranger.
Before heading to North America, Surprise Chef will take the album around Australia through September and October, deliberately choosing rooms with markedly different personalities. Sydney gets two very different encounters, first at Phoenix Central Park on September 24 and then Crowbar the following night, before dates in Brisbane and Bangalow. The band then heads home to Melbourne for an album-release show at Quadraphonic Club on October 23 and The Tote on October 25.
Australian tour dates
Thursday 24 September – Phoenix Central Park, Sydney, NSW
Friday 25 September – Crowbar, Sydney, NSW
Thursday 15 October – The Brightside, Brisbane, QLD
Friday 16 October – A&I Hall, Bangalow, NSW
Friday 23 October – Quadraphonic Club, Melbourne, VIC
Sunday 25 October – The Tote, Melbourne, VIC
Tickets HERE.
