Article Contributed by Shore Fire Media
Published on 2026-10-25
Australian instrumental quartet Surprise Chef released their new album Frogs In A Pond today. For their fifth studio album, 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 and European composers of the 1960s and ’70s, an approach to film scoring that relished in the avant-garde, embracing the strange and mysterious. Frogs In A Pond is an invitation from Surprise Chef to sit down, unplug and listen for a while, and take a journey into the dark unknown.
Next week, Surprise Chef also return to North America for a fall tour beginning October 30 in San Francisco. The run includes a special Halloween show in Los Angeles on October 31, and two full sets at Brooklyn's National Sawdust on November 13: surprise-chef.com/tour.
Today, Surprise Chef has also released an official music video for “Leg Day.” The claymation video by acclaimed director Alistair Nicholls imagines the world of Frogs In A Pond, and the characters and themes that developed as the band created the album. It became a reflection on how people co-exist, an expression of shared human experience. Surprise Chef say 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.
Recorded over a continuous nine-day session at Surprise Chef's College of Knowledge studio in Melbourne, where three members of the group also reside, Frogs In A Pond was captured almost entirely live with minimal overdubs. Longtime producer and engineer Henry Jenkins produced the album, while Leon Michels joins on flute across several tracks. The instrumentation includes drums, electric bass, electric and nylon-string acoustic guitars, piano, clavinet, ARP Odyssey, vibraphone and tuned wood blocks, drawing inspiration from the small ensembles favored by European film composers—including Piero Umiliani and Piero Piccioni—over traditional orchestral arrangements.
Throughout the record, rhythmic and melodic motifs reappear in different forms, creating a sense of continuity as the music moves from one imagined scene to the next. Earlier singles “Inside Voice” and “Outside Voice” introduce the album's cinematic world, while “Tadpoles” explores its central amphibian metaphor: the transformation from the guileless perspective of youth to the world-weariness of adulthood. Drawing on Piccioni's evocative film compositions, “Tadpoles” features delicate clavinet weaving against an ARP synthesizer, while “Leg Day” brings the group's unmistakable rhythmic precision and funk sensibility to the foreground.
Frogs In A Pond follows 2025's acclaimed Superb, which appeared on Rolling Stone Australia's Best Albums of 2025 list. Surprise Chef have earned an international following for their distinctive instrumental sound, informed as much by their isolation in Australia as by a deep love of soul, hip-hop, funk, David Axelrod and groups like Menahan Street Band. Their music has received support from KCRW, KEXP, Gilles Peterson and Questlove, with festival appearances including Reeperbahn, Desert Daze, Pickathon and London Calling. Their recordings have also been sampled for a collaboration between 88rising's Rich Brian and Ghostface Killah, and featured in a Pepsi Super Bowl Halftime commercial.
Listen to Frogs In A Pond here.
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
Reprise
North American Tour Dates
October 30 — San Francisco, CA — Siesta Valley Bowl
October 31 — Los Angeles, CA — Sid the Cat Auditorium (KCRW Presents)
November 1 — San Diego, CA — Quartyard
November 3 — Phoenix, AZ — The Rebel Lounge
November 4 — Albuquerque, NM — Sister Bar
November 6 — Marfa, TX — Flying Island
November 7 — Austin, TX — RADIO/EAST
November 9 — Atlanta, GA — Terminal West
November 10 — Durham, NC — Stanczyks
November 11 — Washington, D.C. — The Hamilton (The Hamilton Live)
November 13 — Brooklyn, NY — National Sawdust — 7:30 p.m. Set
November 13 — Brooklyn, NY — National Sawdust — 10:30 p.m. Set
November 15 — Portland, ME — Oxbow Live
November 17 — Montreal, QC — Theatre Fairmount
November 18 — Toronto, ON — The Mod Club
November 19 — Ferndale, MI — The Magic Bag
November 20 — Cleveland Heights, OH — Grog Shop
November 21 — Chicago, IL — Lincoln Hall
