Surprise Chef Trace Frogs In A Pond Back to Italian Film Scores

Surprise Chef have never treated the record shop as a nostalgia exercise. One member works at Northside Records in Melbourne, and the band’s long habit of digging for deleted soundtracks on vinyl has shaped its sound since the DIY years. On the new album Frogs In A Pond, out now, that habit reads as structure rather than decoration.

The group names Italian composer Piero Piccioni as the greatest single influence on the record. His late-sixties and early-seventies scores, Camille 2000 in particular, pointed them toward the tender and openly romantic passages they wanted to set against the darker funk. Colpo Rovente, built largely on a rhythm section and fronted by cold, ominous main-title music, sits nearer to what Surprise Chef actually do with a groove.

The lineage they cite runs through David Axelrod and The Meters, and 2025’s Superb already marked how far the group had moved from its DIY beginnings. What separates Frogs In A Pond from mere soundtrack pastiche is method. Piccioni’s scores often leaned on tight, largely uncredited rhythm sections doing precise work under a composer’s direction. Surprise Chef work the same way: rhythm carries the atmosphere, and the world-building arrives as a consequence of the playing rather than as arrangement flourish.

The album is out now.