Review: Surprise Chef ooze liquid funk
Education & Recreation album launch, Oxford Art Factory
Review by Rebecca Cushway
Deep in the bowels of Oxford Art Factory on a gloomy Friday evening stand five unassuming guys under dimmed red lights. Glances bounce between them as quiet riffs morph into earth-shattering percussion, and the packed-in crowd is awash with eerie liquid funk. They seem unphased by the applause rolling in waves over them.
The Surprise Chef team seem so at ease with one another, like old friends jamming in their garage on a slow and sweaty Sunday afternoon. The intimate atmosphere is partly created by the sheer number of people packed into the venue, and partly by the familiarity with which they play. Hudson Whitlock, the group’s latest addition, commands the ensemble, cueing the artists and reacting to improvisations as though composing new work on the spot. He acts as an impromptu conductor in a way that seems to encourage more than control the other musicians.
This show almost never happened. They were due to launch their latest LP Education & Recreation late last year until bassist Carl Lindeberg broke his hand in what the band called a “funk-related accident” (which turned out to be a game of local mixed basketball gone awry). Luckily, they were able to regroup and rebook the venue for the new year, with the producer for this record, Henry Jenkins, swooped in with his bass to save the day. The performance was seamless and the heightened anticipation from the delayed launch meant that the audience in that room was primed to fully absorb whatever Surprise Chef had to offer.
The group only stopped a handful of times to address the crowd; silken-haired guitarist Lachlan Stuckey expressed his sincere gratitude to their manager for re-wrangling the band into a new schedule and of course to the punters who were tip-toed trying to get a glance over the humid body-filled room. He also dedicated one of their tracks with a more sleazy bassline, ‘Herbie Hemphill’, to the “herbsmen and herbswomen” in the audience as the stage was drenched in green and a Herbie Hancock-style groove took over. New dad Andrew Congues gets a shout-out and a cheer in between his steady and rolling trance of percussion. Jethro Curtin on keys and vibraphone multi-tasked, loose and joyful, swelling into a continuous stream of sound.
The band wrote the Education & Recreation album largely during the 2020 Melbourne lockdowns as three of the five band members lived together in the sharehouse cum studio, dubbed “The College Of Knowledge”. The artist-led grassroots record label run out of the house serves as a hub forMelbourne’s funk and soul scenee, founded by Stuckey and Curtin. They wanted to advocate for the very specific sound that East-coast Australian soul has, distinct from its US counterparts. The band has a complex and mature sound for a group so young, and a loyal fanbase to match. They have given us a taste of their sticky, sweet and unique funk in a show that was a joy to experience. Well worth the wait.
Surprise Chef is Lachlan Stuckey on guitar, Jethro Curtin on keys, Carl Lindeberg on bass, Andrew Congues on drums, and Hudson Whitlock — the latest member who does it all from percussion to composing to producing. Find more information here.
Collage by Ceridwen Bush
Rebecca Cushway is a radio host blessed with the most luxurious radio voice in the Inner West and burdened with the ability to do everything everywhere all at once. She’s not nearly as smart as the undergrads she tutors at UTS think she is.
This review has been generously donated by Bec.
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