Just Turning the Instruments Up: Surprise Chef Interview

Surprise Chef’s Lachlan Stuckey tells Stewart Gardiner about cinematic soul, naming their HQ after a prison and making a deeper second LP

Maverick producer David Axelrod is alive and well in the Coburg suburb of Melbourne. This is not based in fact of course: no sightings have been reported and indeed no photographic evidence has come to light. But his genius has been detected in the vicinity of the mysterious College of Knowledge and its resident cinematic soul collective, Surprise Chef. As crackpot theories go, it barely even registers in these conspiracy-rich days, where tinfoil-lined MAGA caps are too often preferred over face masks, so perhaps we shouldn’t add to the crazy. Instead, let’s just say that the spirit of Axelrod lives on and continues to shape the world in small and intriguining ways.

Flight of fantasy introduction aside, I don’t want to overstate the influence of David Axelrod upon Surprise Chef. He’s a foundational figure for them, sure, yet there are others in the mix and the Chef are assuredly mapping out their own unique sonic journey through soul, funk and jazz. This is particularly apparent on Daylight Savings, the even more dope follow-up to All News Is Good News, which shakes off any anxiety of influence. It’s a deeper, more confident record that loses none of the warmth or charm of its predecessor.

We contacted the College of Knowledge to find out more and Surprise Chef’s Lachlan Stuckey was on hand to answer questions.

Hope you’re keeping well. Really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me, particularly with everything going on.  

It’s a pleasure. We really enjoyed the last article you wrote about All News Is Good News. 

Thanks! And thank you for making music that brings joy in these messed up times. Is there any music you’ve been listening to these past months that has brought you joy – or indeed triggered any other emotional states? 

Some records that have been consistently on the platter at home: Snooch Dodd & The Pro-Teens – I Flip My Life Every Time I Fly, Sven Wunder – Wabi Sabi, Horatio Luna – Yes Doctor, Catalyst – A Tear and a Smile, The Whitefield Brothers – Earthology, Sampa the Great – “Time’s Up” Junglepussy remix, the new Budos Band album, crazy unreleased shit from Karate Boogaloo (CTB), lots of 70s roots reggae and early dancehall, Liam Bailey’s new stuff. 

Just how important is music right now and what do you think grassroots scenes are going to look like post-pandemic? What can music communities do to move into an uncertain future? 

Grassroots scenes and communities will endure, as they always have. In Australia, with international travel pretty much off the table for the time being, there will be more opportunities for things like festival gigs going to local acts to fill the vacuum of international touring acts. In my mind, that’s a good thing. As far as moving into an uncertain future, community is key. Supporting your mates and ensuring you’re keeping an eye out for marginalised people in the community is integral. 

This might sound like I’m interviewing Wu-Tang Clan (I’m getting Raekwon vibes even asking this), but who cooks what in the Surprise Chef kitchen? Alternatively, a simple “please introduce yourselves” might suffice… 

Surprise Chef is me (Stuckey) on guitar, Jethro Curtin on keys, Andrew Congues on drums and Carl Lindeberg on bass. Hudson Whitlock is the 5^th Chef on percussion and spiritual motivation. Henry Jenkins has engineered every recording we’ve ever done (and every one we ever will), so I’d consider him to be an intergral part of the band too. We’ve had the pleasure of recording with great Melbourne players Lucky Pereira (percussion), Greg Sher (alto), Jon DiNapoli (tenor), Max Dowling (tenor), Erica Tucceri (flute) and Joe Orton (slide guitar, percussion) also. 

What’s happening in Coburg, Melbourne? Could you talk about the scene there?  

Coburg is a beautiful inner suburb just North of Melbourne city. It’s a pretty peaceful pocket of Melbourne. It’s just next to Brunswick, which has been a hub for music and art over the last few decades, but has become very saturated and expensive to live in. The Melbourne scene is bustling – loads of people doing great stuff with a great attitude. A great deal of the music being made in the jazz, soul and funk idioms is coming from music school graduates, so a great deal of it is flashy and institutionalised. We try and keep ourselves in check in that sense.  

The College of Knowledge is many things: a house, a recording studio, a record label and quite possibly a state of mind. Really feels as if you’ve created your own world, which is beautifully captured on the records. Can you pull back the curtain a little on the College of Knowledge?  

The College is a 100-year-old brick house that Jethro and I moved into about four years ago. Carl from Surprise Chef moved in about two years ago. We named it after the moniker given to Pentridge Prison, a now-defunct maximum security prison that was the first landmark in modern-day Coburg. The house is surrounded by big bluestones, much like the ones the prison is constructed from. We called it that as a tongue-in-cheek reference to the prison, but also because we see this house as a place of learning. We started the College of Knowledge label to focus on releasing music that didn’t fit the mould of what was considered to be the hip soul sound in Melbourne at the time. Bands like Karate Boogaloo and The Pro-Teens were already releasing incredible instrumental shit, and we wanted to be a part of that. We built a studio in the upstairs room of the house in 2018, and recorded the first Chef album there. It wasn’t really a studio per se, just a room that had our tape machine and instruments. Carl from Surprise Chef moved in shortly after. We later moved the studio downstairs into a bigger space, which is where we recorded the new Surprise Chef record Daylight Savings and the new Pro-Teens record I Flip My Life Every Time I Fly. 

What does ‘cinematic soul’ mean to you? It’s one of those labels that feels intriguing enough not to be just another label (says someone who writes about music…). How useful a term is it to talk about what Surprise Chef and others are doing?  

That’s a great question. I’ve been a big fan of the Menahan Street Band and El Michels Affair for ages – when I first heard Menahan’s Make the Road By Walking it felt like I’d found something that expressed all the things I loved about soul music, without the cringey tropes that one often finds with ‘revivalist soul’. I bought an El Michels Affair 45 from Northside Records around the same time, and saw the words ‘Cinematic Soul’ on the label. That description made so much sense to me as far describing what I liked about the music. Since then, I’ve found heaps of music that resonates with me that falls under that bracket in some way – David Axelrod, Isaac Hayes in the 70s, Arthur Verocai – all that stuff has a ‘cinematic’ quality in my mind.  

How would you describe your sound and what do you hope folks take away from hearing it?  

When we started Surprise Chef, I just wanted to make music that would stand up next to what Karate Boogaloo was doing. A lot of what we do is inspired by them. We’re also hugely influenced by Thomas Brenneck, Leon Michels and David Axelrod – I’d expect that most heads would see that influence pretty plainly, but we’re also not trying to replicate anything those people have done. I think our music could be accurately described as instrumental music made by self-conscious suburban-Australian white guys who love funk music.  

Is working in an analogue studio a key part of arriving at what you want your music to be like? Does 1970s jazz-funk and soul provide sources of inspiration in terms of aesthetics and approach as well as sound and spirit? 

Totally. When we started recording with tape, it was because all the records we love were made that way. Any production nerd will go on about the ‘warmth’ and ‘richness’ of tape, but we quickly realised that making records that way isn’t just about the sonic qualities; it’s about the process. Recording live to tape forces you to focus on the vibe of the band and the energy and atmosphere in the performance, rather than allowing endless control over ‘perfection’. I also just hate making music on computers as I find looking at waveforms very distracting, and not conducive to making music with real feeling. Not dissing the process, it just doesn’t work for me personally.    

I compared your debut album to David Axelrod, Money Mark and Beastie Boys circa-Check Your Head. With the Beasties and Money Mark I’m thinking in terms of certain influences you may share with them, rather than them being a direct point of reference for you. Is that fair to say? Could you name some of the influences behind Surprise Chef? Who do you view as your contemporaries?  

We love heaps of 60s soul, 70s jazz, afrobeat and so on, but I think the specific influences can be narrowed down to David Axelrod, El Michels Affair, Menahan Street Band and Karate Boogaloo. There’s specific parts of each of those musical identities that we connect with and are inspired by. As far as contemporaries, of course KB are a big one. There’s a killer band called The Let Your Hair Down Girls that are about to return with a bang next year. The Putbacks are the band doing instrumental soul really well (and have done for years), but they’re the big daddies. We’re not on their level.  

I’m thinking about Beastie Boys getting back to playing their instruments in their G-Son Studios on the Check Your Head and Ill Communication sessions and creating the kind of music they had been sampling from. Likewise, the two Surprise Chef LPs are full of killer breaks that will surely make for future hip-hop sample material. Which also applies to Sven Wunder, who is similarly making contemporary music that could be classic breaks (although you both sound very different). Your work is certainly for the heads. Do you view it at all in those terms? In what ways do you feel your music connects with hip-hop? Obviously El Michels Affair made their own connection explicit with the Wu-Tang material.

When we started Surprise Chef, that element of creating both ‘sample fodder’ and music that would communicate referentially with like-minded music/record heads was very prevalent. Personally, I wanted to make records that a soul/funk/hip-hop dork such as myself would instantly understand in the context of sample culture and crate-digging culture. However, the more music we make, the more we get away from those particular considerations. These days, we’re deeper into exploring our music in its own world, rather than just how it interacts with shit we like. 

 Mr Bongo feels like the perfect fit for Surprise Chef. That whole world around their record label, record shop, crate-digging, DJing etc is a really appealing one. They’ve got a real international community thing going on between like-minded folks – one that you’re now a part of. Could you talk about how you hooked up with Mr Bongo and where you fit with what they’re doing?  

I was working in a record store here in Melbourne, where I met the high-flying Heather Sheret, who was then about to assume responsibility for Mr Bongo’s distro. She was in town on holiday, and picked up a copy of our split 7” with Karate Boogaloo. Through Heather, we started supplying the Mr Bongo store with copies of the releases we were doing on College of Knowledge from Surprise Chef, Karate Boogaloo and The Pro-Teens. After we put out All News Is Good News, they asked us if we wanted to put out some records together. Bongo are an institution; we’ve been buying their reissues and comps for years, so we were happy to link up with them. Mr Bongo connect a lot of dots through the last 60-odd years of music – they’ve been a huge force behind getting so much of the shit we like from soul, to disco, to Afrobeat, MPB, Japanese jazz and on and on to a wider audience. It’s a nice acknowledgement for them to consider what we’re doing to be a part of that puzzle. 

Your two albums were recorded a year apart, yet All News Is Good News only received a wider release this summer, so with Daylight Savings on the horizon it feels like an abundance of riches from Surprise Chef in 2020 for those of us (including me) who didn’t catch your debut when it dropped in 2019. I’m certainly not complaining – although ask me again when I’m putting together my albums of the year list… Do you feel a sense of momentum right now? People are hearing you maybe for the first time, getting to know the debut album, then there’s new material culminating in the release of Daylight Savings. It must be a wonderful position to be in as a group?  

Yeah, it’s cool to be able to follow up so quick with Daylight Savings. Since Bongo re-released All News, our audience has grown rapidly – it’s great to give those new to the party a new record straight off the bat. We made the record just over a year ago now, so it already feels like old news to us. When the COVID-19 bomb dropped 6 months ago, it looked like Daylight Savings might have had to be shelved for a while. We’re glad that didn’t end up being the case.  

You arrived fully formed with All News Is Good News, yet Daylight Savings digs even deeper and feels more expansive without losing any of the charm of its predecessor. There’s a definite Surprise Chef sound, but it’s one that allows you to move in multiple directions, explore various facets of that sound. Do you feel a lot of freedom in what you’re doing? How do you think you’ve developed as a band in the journey between records?  

I’d say we feel almost complete freedom. We’ve never made anything with any considerations in mind other than making shit that we dig. We’re not even trying to make the best record we can make, either; we’re just giving it a red hot crack and having fun doing it. Pretty much everything up to All News was written by me and Jethro, with the arrangements being finessed in the studio with the band. By the time we were writing Daylight Savings, we’d grown way closer as a musical team and thus much more of the songwriting was collaborative. I think by now we’re also more confident in our own sound, and therefore less concerned with trying to sound like our influences.  

How would you describe each of your two LPs? Where were you aiming for with Daylight Savings and did you get there?  

I think Daylight Savings is a deeper LP than All News. The first LP was just a collection of songs we’d written, whereas Daylight Savings has a lot more consideration for the journey through the record as a whole. Also, Henry Jenkins (engineer/producer and Karate Boogaloo bass player) truly excelled in recording and mixing Daylight Savings. I still can’t fathom how he made us playing in our house sound so vivid and rich. He often summarises his role as “just turning the instruments up”, but Henry is a genius when it comes to recording this music.  

The covers themselves are very striking. Great photography, layout, typography – everything. Who designed the covers and did you have a lot of input?  

Both of the cover photos were auto-timer shots on Jethro’s old film camera. I designed the cover layouts. The All News shot came from when we we’re putting out our first 45 (Stuart Little’s Car / DA Stab Wound) and we needed a press shot urgently. We went down to the Merri Creek, just near our drummer Congues’ house, and took half a roll of film’s worth of auto-timer shots. I always loved that photo of the bridge (it’s the bridge in North Fitzroy near Danny’s Burgers for any Melbourne heads reading), and thought it encapsulated the feeling of what we do. I designed the cover around that image. Same deal with Daylight Savings; we took that photo in the College of Knowledge backyard during a rehearsal leading up to the album session. Our beloved jasmine bush was blooming so it was a great opportunity to take a photo of us standing underneath it. That jasmine bush is in some ways a central theme in Daylight Savings. 

Hopefully Surprise Chef live isn’t something I have to wait a lifetime to experience! How important is playing live to you and what are your hopes for getting back out there – and over here? If you could make sure and bring some of that College of Knowledge merch to sell that would be awesome too…  

We love playing gigs, but I often feel that we exist a little more naturally in the studio than on stage. Our ‘live show’ doesn’t involve any theatrics or clever stagecraft – a Surprise Chef gig just looks like 4 gangly white guys playing instruments. I always loved seeing Melbourne band Krakatau, because their ‘show’ is just them playing their music with no frills or concocted antics, but I can also imagine that to some people, that kind of performance isn’t super engaging to watch. With that said, we can’t wait to get to Europe and America to play. There have been so many people from places we’ve never been who have connected with the music and reached out to us, it would be a true privilege to get to go play for them. It’s very difficult to plan these things with the Coronavirus in play, but with some luck we might be touring this time next year.  

What’s next for Surprise Chef? Is it greedy to want even more music from you?  

The lockdown in Melbourne has hindered our recording plans over the last 6 months. We’d planned to have the third album well and truly finished by now, but that will happen as soon as the lockdown ends. We’ve been writing music for another split 7” with Karate Boogaloo, some collaborations with friends and inspirations, and some stuff for a few Surprise Chef-adjacent projects that will explore other idioms we love like sweet soul and reggae. Our good friends Henry Jenkins and Hudson Whitlock are both writing lots of incredible music for us to record together as soon as we can. Aside from music, the next few months will see us playing lots of Frisbee, getting our Fortnite skills up and spending lots of time with our cat, The Fabulous Baby Huey.

Surprise Chef at Mr Bongo

Surprise Chef Bandcamp

Credit: main photograph by Izzie Austin