Surprise Chef interview: “If it feels superb, it will sound superb”
Superb-stars
From Hiatus Kaiyote and Skeleten to Amyl & The Sniffers and King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, Melbourne has been chucking out great bands at an alarming rate of late.
Surprise Chef aren’t quite the latest exports to emerge from the Australian city, with a clutch of albums and remixes from proper house royalty like Masters At Work under their belt. But we were so taken by the sheer funky exurberance of their latest offering, Superb, we just had to have a word with guitarist Lachlan Stuckey. Here’s what we learnt.
Hi and thanks for your time…. First of all, can you tell us where you are right now, and what kind of day you’re having… Been anywhere already or going anywhere interesting later?
I’m at home in Coburg, Victoria, Australia. I’m going to head into our office where we run our College Of Knowledge label from and pack some orders. I like packing the records we make and sending them to the heads that want them. It’s a real farm-to-table operation. Sometimes our drummer Cong drops by and we go eat at A1 Bakery, today might just be one of those days.
Tell us who you are, what you do and how you hooked up – what was your common ground initially and how did it all take shape?
We’re five enthusiastic individuals practicing friendship and funk music. When we play instruments together it’s called ‘Surprise Chef’. Four of us met at music school, we met Hudson (percussionist / vibraphonist) around the traps playing gigs in Melbourne. Hudson was already recording hip music to tape in his bands Karate Boogaloo, The Pro-Teens and The Cactus Channel back then. We all bonded over records by David Axelrod, Isaac Hayes, El Michels Affair, Menahan Street Band and the like. Jethro and I wrote some tunes and we recorded a 45 and started a label (College Of Knowledge Records) to release it. Thankfully we’ve been able to keep making records and messing around since.
Give us a quick run down of your musical upbringings – parental/sibling tastes and your first musical loves, first steps into music making, embarrassing teenage bands etc
My parents’ music tastes were pretty unhelpful to me; my mum had some Skyhooks LPs that I really dug and my dad and I bonded over Bob Dylan when I was a teenager, but other than that I got most of my early music taste from my older sister’s boyfriend. I got super into Metallica, Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, noisey stuff. Then I got heavy into hip hop in my teenage years, like Notorious BIG and Wu-Tang, I think I found that from skateboard videos and being a Limewire fiend on the family computer. I didn’t get into anything funky until I went to music school, where I started listening to jazz and soul. The first Charles Bradley record was new then and it blew my mind. I found Budos Band and Menahan Street Band from there, and that really sent me down a trip of finding the origins of that music like Fela, James Brown, Isaac Hayes etc. It was the first Menahan Street Band record that really crystalised my music taste, that record for real still gives me goosebumps every time. Hiatus Kaiyote put out their ‘Tawk Tomahawk’ EP whilst we were at uni too – the influence from that record proliferated through Melbourne like crazy at that time, and Jethro and I played in a neo-soul band around 2012-2016 that made some pretty confusing music as a result.
Similarly, give us a brief resume of what you’ve released up until now, for the uninitiated…
We put out a couple of 45s on College Of Knowledge (Stuart Little’s Car b/w DA Stab Wound and a split 7″ with Karate Boogaloo) before we made our first LP, All News Is Good News, which was co-released by College Of Knowledge with Mr Bongo.
By the time that album came out, we’d made a second one called Daylight Savings, which was released shortly after by Bongo and College. We then signed to the big dogs Big Crown Records and released our third album Education & Recreation. We’ve also put out a remix 12″ with Masters At Work / Nu Yorican Soul & Harvey Sutherland, a cover of a tune by great shakuhachi player Minoru Muraoka and a remix of a tune by the living legend Lady Wray.
And – surprise, surprise – tell us about where the band’s name comes from
Not telling!!!!
The new album saw you changing up your working techniques a little – how did that change things up?
We’d been getting increasingly painstaking in making our records, getting really zoomed in on attention to detail. We’d just done this live original score to the film Wake In Fright, which was a very meticulous process, and we wanted to zoom out a little and make music that felt lighter and less intense. We wanted to make decisions quickly and not labor over takes. We took a bunch of unfinished ideas into the studio and tried to move as intuitively through arranging and completing them as possible. We wanted the process to be spontaneous and for that energy to be captured in the recordings.
And, Superb – a superb name for an album, if we may say so! Where did that idea come from?
We wanted the principle, if not the only, consideration when evaluating creative decisions during the recording process to be ‘does this feel Superb?’. We wanted to apply a logic for decision making that if it feels superb, it will sound superb, and that will make the record superb. Less pontificating and debating merits of this idea or that, more room for vibe and spontaneity.
What’s next for you in the short/medium/long term? What are you hearing that’s inspiring you? Any more live or release action we should know about?
Surprise Chef will be in your town this year playing the superb music of Superb. We’ll be touring Australia, North America and Canada which will be a hoot. Currently I’m inspired by Hudson’s solo project Brenda, who has a 45 dropping on College Of Knowledge as well as lots more great stuff to come. There’s lots of great music coming up for release on College Of Knowledge from our community that we’re very excited about (JNBO, Let Your Hair Down, Temporary Blessings, Brenda). I’m also inspired by the Frollen Music Library, a project Hudson has going on with his Karate Boogaloo bandmates Henry Jenkins and Darvid Thor, who literally make dozens of incredible tunes each and every month. Jethro, Hudson and I have been making music with a singer from Melbourne by the name of Ella Thompson, she’s super legit and we’re loving that stuff. I also fuck heavy heavy with the following contemporary artists: Brainstory, Lady Wray, El Michels Affair, Budos Band, Edan, Karate Boogaloo, The Pro-Teens, JNBO, Miss Kaninna, Emma Donovan, The Putbacks, Christoph El Truento, Clear Path Ensemble, Circling Sun, Chunky, Your Old Droog.
Pre-order your 12″ vinyl copy of Superb, due out on May 16, by clicking here,
Photos courtesy of Nick McKinlay