Surprise Chef Turn an Imaginary Italian Thriller Into the Year's Most Cinematic Jazz-Funk Album

Frogs In A Pond album cover by Surprise Chef

J.F.S. Radio Journal · Musical discovery · Album focus

A shadowy figure. A pool of water. A film that was never made.

That is the starting point for Frogs In A Pond, the fifth studio album from Melbourne instrumental group Surprise Chef. Released October 23, 2026, on Concord Jazz, it’s a 40-minute suite imagined as the soundtrack to an Italian giallo thriller that exists only in the band’s mind.

No film to look up. No plot to spoil. Just a carefully sequenced set of grooves, motifs and scenes, unfolding at its own pace.

Listen to Frogs In A Pond through Surprise Chef’s official link, or hear it on the band’s official Bandcamp page.

A score without a screen

Giallo cinema, Italian thrillers and horror films especially associated with the 1960s and ’70s, gave Surprise Chef a frame for the album: strange, mysterious and open to musical invention.

The band’s most important reference was composer Piero Piccioni, known for scores including Camille 2000 and Colpo Rovente. Surprise Chef have called him “probably the greatest single influence on the album as a whole.” Piero Umiliani was another key touchstone, alongside Sven Libaek’s Inner Space and Alain Goraguer’s La Planète Sauvage.

These are not instructions to imitate a particular scene. They point towards an approach: music that creates atmosphere, suggests characters and leaves room for the listener’s imagination. Frogs In A Pond doesn’t tell us what happens in its nonexistent thriller. It makes a sound-world and lets us fill in the dark.

Illustrative still life of vintage analog recording equipment and session notes

The sound of a small room

Surprise Chef come from Coburg, Melbourne. Three members of the band share a house there, which is also home to their self-built, analogue College of Knowledge studio.

The group (guitarist Lachlan Stuckey, keyboardist Jethro Curtin, bassist Carl Lindeberg and drummer Andrew Congues) formed in 2017. Hudson Whitlock, a producer, composer, percussionist and multi-instrumentalist, also plays on the recording. Leon Michels guests on flute across several tracks. The album was produced by longtime producer and engineer Henry Jenkins.

For Frogs In A Pond, the band met on Thursdays and developed “The Palette”: a framework of musical ideas, guidelines and instruments that would work with their eight-track tape recorder. Then came a continuous nine-day recording session. The music was captured almost entirely live, with minimal overdubs.

That small-ensemble sound was part of the plan. The European film composers who inspired the band often chose small groups instead of orchestras. Surprise Chef followed that lead with drums, electric bass and guitar, nylon-string acoustic guitar, piano, clavinet, ARP Odyssey, vibraphone and tuned wood blocks.

The result has room to breathe. The bass can carry a melody; the drums can sit dry and forward; keyboards can colour the edges without crowding the centre. There’s no vocalist to lead us through the sequence. The instruments do the storytelling.

Listen for what moves between tracks

The running order is more than a stack of separate pieces. Surprise Chef treated the flow as crucial, letting melodic and rhythmic motifs return in different forms and on different instruments. Listen across the transitions and familiar gestures begin to feel like connective tissue: a musical detail resurfacing in a new light.

The album opens with “Inside Voice” and “Outside Voice,” then moves into “Frog Technique.” The titles have a playful streak; the music is patient and deliberate. “Knuckle Sandwich,” “I Love What You’ve Done With The Place,” “Get Well Soon” and “Duet” add their own brief scenes along the way. Later, “Tadpoles” gives way to “Leg Day,” followed by “Where The Crows Fly Backwards,” “Omnipresence” and the title track.

“Leg Day” was the first preview single. The band described it as “the record’s requisite toe-tapper” and “a tune of attitude, belief and determination for your amphibian exercise regimen.” The joke is a neat fit for a record that can hold both a sense of humour and a serious feel for the groove.

Illustrative close-up of vibraphone, tuned percussion and an analog synthesizer

Frogs in a pond

The album’s name grew from the recording process. During the close-knit session, with little contact with the outside world, the band began to think of themselves as “frogs in a pond”: a small community, sharing space and time.

Characters emerged from that idea, including The Thief, represented by the cloaked frog on the cover. Stuckey found the cloak-and-dagger imagery in a book inherited from his grandfather. It became one of the figures the band invoked while making the suite.

The story is an undercurrent, not a plot to decode. The record is also a reflection on how people coexist. A small musical world built by a group working in close quarters. That helps explain the contrast between its mysterious film-score atmosphere and the playful titles. The band leave space for both.

A patient listen, and a discovery worth making

The critical response has recognised the record’s cinematic character and unhurried pace. JOLT’s review praises the picked bass, dry drums and organ-led arrangements, while noting that 13 tracks of mood can run slightly long and that some brief pieces feel more like interludes than fully developed scenes. It’s a useful caveat: this is a suite built around atmosphere and sequence, not a set of quick singles.

That approach is part of what makes Frogs In A Pond a natural J.F.S. discovery. Surprise Chef have already found listeners through support from KCRW, KEXP and Gilles Peterson, praise from Questlove, and a growing catalogue that includes 2025’s Superb. But this album rewards attention for its own details: the picked bass line, the space around the drums, the motifs that reappear as the scenery changes.

Illustrative still life of a vinyl record being discovered in a crate

At Soul Lane J.F.S. Radio, the point is not simply to chase the obvious record. Our J.F.S. Model makes room for overlooked album tracks, back-catalogue gems and quality new releases: music that connects Jazz, Funk and Soul without needing to fit a single label. Surprise Chef’s instrumental, groove-first sound sits comfortably in that conversation.

It’s a reminder that this music isn’t only a story of familiar classics. New records can carry old influences forward, reshaping them in a small Melbourne studio and sending them somewhere unexpected. Frogs In A Pond is an invitation to listen past the first impression — and to keep digging.

A 40-minute film in the mind. No screen required.

Album details