Surprise Chef is a group from outside of Melbourne who have been putting out music for about the last four years. The quintet last put out in album in 2020, when they dropped All News is Good News. There have been some remixes and singles since then, but now they make their Big Crown debut with their new full-length album, Education & Recreation.

Surprise Chef features Lachlan Stuckey on guitar, Jethro Curtin on keys, Carl Lindeberg on bass, Andrew Congues on drums, and Hudson Whitlock on percussion. As a group, they are delivering on some cinematic instrumental soul and funk that draws upon the early ‘70s time period when people like Isaac Hayes, David Axelrod, and Dennis Coffey were creating this gritty new sound. As a contemporary group, Surprise Chef find themselves in conversation with groups like Budos Band and El Michel’s Affair. The band is incredibly tight, as you would hope for, with some really solid grooves being laid down over the course of the album. Congues keeps everything really funky and sharp on the drums, and Stuckey keeps everything filthy with his guitar licks. Lindeberg is the glue, and Curtin and Whitlock the wildcards, bouncing around the arrangements and making the group feel a lot bigger as they fill out the sound of the album. It’s not anything you haven’t heard before, but when the funk is this gritty and soulful and just really well done, you don’t really care if the music is groundbreaking or not. You just want it to feel good, and Education & Recreation feels really good.

Surprise Chef is relatively new to the scene, but in that short time they’ve shown some growth and just continued to get tighter as they lay down some really tasty funk. Education & Recration is just nasty with that early ‘70s instrumental funk style.