Surprise Chef

Coburg

Surprise Chef is an instrumental band from Coburg, just outside Melbourne, whom Big Crown describes as having first gathered in 2017 to tape spontaneous funk jams that became a series of collectable 45s (MusicBrainz says 2018). Keyboardist Jethro Curtin and guitarist Lachlan Stuckey wanted to make instrumental music influenced by David Axelrod and gathered friends, most of whom had met at music school; Stuckey said we just called the fellas in and started a band. They describe themselves as moody shades of instrumental jazz-funk, drawing on 1970s film scores, funkier jazz and hip hop sampling, and run their own label as well as College of Knowledge, their Coburg house.

All News Is Good News and Daylight Savings (October 16, 2020, College of Knowledge and Mr Bongo) were made in their home studio; NME's Tom Walters called the latter an effortlessly lovable album that couldn't have come at a better time for a city reeling from a winter unlike any other. Before Education & Recreation they made a first European tour, festival dates and a BBC Radio Maida Vale appearance. Big Crown signed them in 2022 and the album came out on October 14, 2022; Triple R made it Album of the Week, calling the band a group greater than the sum of its parts, and Forte Magazine compared them to BADBADNOTGOOD. Stuckey said that being in Australia, so far away, they only get glimpses and glances of this music's origins. They toured Australia from October to December 2022, played the Sydney Opera House with Lee Fields in late 2023 and performed a live score to the 1970s film Wake in Fright in 2024.

Superb (2025, with the single "Bully Ball") was recorded to tape with a full band in about a week, fewer takes than before, with a timpani miked while reverberated by a bass amp and pots and pans among its sounds. Questlove and DJ Nu-Mark have praised them, a Pepsi Super Bowl halftime advertisement used their music, and a producer working with 88 Rising sampled "Spiky Boi". Setlist.fm counts 100 setlists, with "Spiky Boi" played 27 times.