One of my favorite aspects of Desert Daze is the new music I discover there every time I set foot in Lake Perris. The lineup is a perennial gold mine of fantastic tunes from all over the world, and 2022, the tenth anniversary of the festival, was no exception. One of my favorite new acts from this year’s bill was Surprise Chef out of Australia. Melding buttery synths, motorik drums, hypnotic bass, and elegant, understated guitar, their set on the Beach Stage was nothing but rock solid grooves and high-flying vibes. I recently caught up with guitarist Lachlan Stuckey to discuss touring life, their new album Education & Recreation, instrumental psychedelia, and more.
Andrew Howie: What can you tell me about this new album compared to your previous records?
Lachlan Stuckey: In a lot of ways it’s no different; we made a concerted decision to stay the course and maintain the process that we’ve employed on the last couple of records, just based on the sense that we haven’t made the best record we can make employing those particular processes and considerations and goals. So I think if anything, a lot of the bones of the record, as far as the way we made the record and the things we had in our head at the time, are quite similar. We just feel it has a lot more space on it. Though if I may pontificate for a moment, we did have the self-confidence to have a bit more space and have entire tunes intended to be delicate, quiet, and soft. I suppose that’s the bigger difference, but first and foremost it’s just a better record. We’ve had more time to play together, write tunes together, we’ve had more time to get to the small end of the funnel as far as what this band is trying to do.
AH: Can you elaborate on what that means for you as a group as far as putting your music together?
LS: We definitely spend a lot more time on things now. Back in the day things tended to come together more quickly, and we recorded the first two albums over a few days. The first album we did over I think two days, Saturday and Sunday, and we might’ve spent four on the second one. For this one we took nine days. We had a lot more songs to record. We wanted to record more than we needed to cut down the best record out of the tunes we’d been writing at the time. But also, I think we just had a higher standard for executing the takes. Some takes took eight hours of just playing the song over and over and over again until it felt exactly right, because we sort of record live to tape. If it’s a five-minute tune, we have to play those five minutes from start to finish as many times as we need to until it’s right. I think it’s the standard of execution that probably was very different on this record. We just spent a lot more time on it, layering.
AH: Has recording live to tape been your procedure from day one?
LS: Yes, that was a decision we made very early, based on a few factors. First and foremost, the records we really love were made that way, and because of the limitations and restrictions that are attached to working that way, there were certain quirks and sensibilities that were attached to that process that we find really support the goals of the band and the goals of the music we’re trying to make. In short, it just because much more about the feeling of the song in general, the feeling of the playing, the energy, than about perfection and everything sounding “perfect.” Those quirks are exciting to us. It also means that the recordings sound exactly what we sound like when we’re playing together. There’s nothing doctored or polished, everything you hear on the recording is what the five of us sound like.
AH: For a lack of a better term, you could say the music of Surprise Chef falls under the broad banner of psychedelic music. What does the term ‘psychedelic’ mean to you?
LS: It’s interesting, because we’ve never sought to categorize ourselves as psychedelic or in the psychedelic realm, but at the end of the day the music is most effectively categorized by the listener, and that is a descriptor that’s come up a lot. People describe us as psychedelic, and it’s just interesting, because it’s not something we’ve ever given a lot of thought to. We’ve given a lot of thought to other descriptors and other ways that we can associate with other conventions or genres, or genre identifiers. But I suppose the thing that I would have to suggest is the most psychedelic about our music is just the sense of repetition. We like to play the same thing over and over and over again, we have lots of sections that lean pretty heavily on the technique of repetition, and I think that’s a pretty psychedelic kind of construct. Fela Kuti for example, his music is very psychedelic; I don’t think he would necessarily describe it as such, but what makes it so psychedelic is that kind of trance-inducing sense of repetition where people can get really lost in what’s happening. It’s meditative, in a way; so to me that’s the most psychedelic thing about our music.
AH: As far as writing instrumental music like yours vs. songs with lyrics, do you consider one or the other to be more difficult or to carry any specific restrictions?
LS: Well, I’ve never considered there being limitations or difficulties attached to writing instrumental music. I think we’re all natural instrumentalists. None of us have really categorized ourselves as singers by any stretch of the imagination, so arranging instrumental music is very much in our wheelhouse. I think we’re all on the same path together, making music where the focal point is not even one single instrument but rather all the instruments instead of a singer. We’ve not ruled out working with a vocalist at some point in the future or anything, but we’re not experienced in writing lyrics or directing a vocalist or anything, we just know how to play instruments. So I think we haven’t really experienced any difficulties or restrictions with writing instrumental music, it’s a hell of a lot easier than writing lyrics! I wake up every day and thank the universe that I don’t have to write lyrics.
AH: You mentioned earlier how the band has more self-confidence now; can you elaborate on how that’s affected how the songs themselves come together?
LS: When we started the band, the idea was for Jethro, our keyboardist, and I to sort of write the songs and bring them to the band to flesh the tunes out and finalize the arrangements, but as we’ve been playing together over the years, all the players have a better sense of our musical identity and what their part in it is, so it’s become a lot easier to write tunes collaboratively. It does vary, sometimes a tune is brought in by one person more or less fully fleshed out, and they’ll direct the band about how they want it to sound, and sometimes it comes in as just a very basic idea and it’s produced collaboratively. The one constant I think with all the tunes is that there’s a lot of back and forth from one person working on the idea to taking it to the band, and the band will flesh it out, and that person will take it back and continue refining it, bring it back, and so on and so forth until we’re happy enough with it.
AH: Tell me a little bit about your touring experiences; how have things been going for Surprise Chef on the road?
LS: This is our first tour in the US, but we were in Europe last month, and that was our first international tour. You know, like everyone else, we couldn’t tour for the last couple of years, so when it became a possibility to tour, it all came pretty thick and fast, so it’s a steep learning curve.
We spend a lot of time together in Melbourne. We’re very close friends, we’ve got very good communication, but being on the other side of the world, playing seven shows in a row, with big drives and sharing beds and all the rest, it puts you under a certain kind of pressure. So we’re learning in real time how to tour together, and it’s a wonderful thing. I think we’re doing great, but it certainly is a lot. Not a lot of sleep, a lot of long drives, setting up, packing down, trying to play a good show, get people out there to the show. We’re definitely learning pretty quickly how we exist when we’re on tour together.
AH: The music scene in Australia seems to be on fire right now. What is it, in your opinion, about the music coming out of Australia that makes it so popular with the rest of the world?
LS: A thing about music in Australia is that generally no matter what it is, to a certain degree, it’s based on music that was built and designed in America or Europe. We don’t have a lot of styles that were born here and that have a distinctly Australian identity. There may be Australian interpretations of other music, but I think that tends to mean that listeners in places like America and Europe hear the music being made in Australia (which to us is just hip hop, funk, or rock, whatever genre it is), and to an American listener that has grown up listening to American funk or pop, there is something that is maybe a little bit intangible. It’s a little bit of that bastardization that we have to naturally employ, that makes it come out in a strange, fresh, unique way. I think that might be why people dig Australian bands overseas.
That being said, there are a lot of different factors as to why Melbourne and Australia have so much good music coming out. I think another big part of it is, particularly in our experience, those genres you mentioned, psychedelic rock and whatnot, there is an absence of competition or aggressive or hostility between bands here, like you might find in bigger cities. I think in Australia, everyone seems to, for the most part, have the understanding that it’s a pretty small country population-wise, and if you’re into some weird niche thing, there is no point alienating other people who are doing a similar thing. Everyone is just stoked to be on the same tip as someone else. Other bands, other people, individuals in the community who have similar musical values to us? The more the merrier! I like to think that contributes to the hotbed, you might say, of music in Melbourne and Australia, because everyone is supporting each other for the most part.
Surprise Chef is Lachlan Stuckey (guitar), Jethro Curtin (keys), Carl Lindeberg (bass), Andrew Congues (drums), and Hudson Whitlock (percussion, composition, production). Go listen to their music, you won’t be sorry.
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