The Coburg quartet's Concord Jazz debut lands 23 October, and Surprise Chef are taking Frogs In A Pond down the east coast.
Melbourne’s Surprise Chef are back with fifth album Frogs In A Pond and a national tour to show it off.
Out 23 October, Frogs In A Pond is the first Surprise Chef album for Concord Jazz, and it plays as a single 40-minute suite rather than a set of standalone songs. Funk-flecked lead single Leg Day is out now.
The record takes its cues from Italian giallo cinema of the 1960s and 70s, and the small-ensemble film composers who scored that era. The group built it around a framework they dubbed The Palette, writing within the limits of an eight-track tape machine before tracking almost entirely live over a continuous nine-day session at their self-built College of Knowledge studio in Coburg.
Surprise Chef
- 24 September – Phoenix Central Park, Sydney NSW
- 25 September – Crowbar, Sydney NSW
- 15 October – The Brightside, Brisbane QLD
- 16 October – A&I Hall, Bangalow NSW
- 23 October – Quadraphonic Club, Melbourne VIC
- 25 October – The Tote, Melbourne VIC
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The run was mapped out to move through wildly different rooms, from tight band spaces to purpose-built listening venues, so the four-piece could feel how each track shifts depending on where it lands. It takes in a release-day show at Quadraphonic Club in Brunswick and a later date at The Tote.
Frogs In A Pond took shape as a reflection on how people live alongside one another, an idea that only deepened as the band sealed themselves off during recording and became a small, self-contained world of their own. Characters surfaced along the way, among them The Thief, the cloak-and-dagger frog peering out from the cover, drawn from imagery guitarist Lachlan Stuckey found in a book handed down by his grandfather.
Across 13 tracks the group layer drums, bass, guitar, piano, clavinet, Arp Odyssey synthesiser, vibraphone and tuned wood blocks, with special guest Leon Michels adding flute throughout. It follows 2025’s Superb and arrives after a decade that’s carried Surprise Chef well beyond Coburg, taking in festival slots at Reeperbahn, Desert Daze and Pickathon, a Pepsi Super Bowl commercial soundtrack and a sample on a Rich Brian and Ghostface Killah collaboration. A North American tour follows, their fourth lap of the US.
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