Surprise Chef — “Tadpoles”

We're still sore from “Leg Day,” but when the funk summons, you show up.

Surprise Chef are back with “Tadpoles,” another piece of their forthcoming fifth album Frogs In A Pond, and apparently we've arrived early enough to watch the population grow. A group of tadpoles is a school. A group of frogs is an army. Consider this basic intelligence gathering before things escalate.

“Tadpoles” doesn't need a vocalist because Surprise Chef have once again filled every available conversational role themselves. Bass has something to say. Keys would like to respond. Percussion keeps interrupting. Somewhere in the middle of all this, the groove starts moving with the casual confidence of something that knows perfectly well you're going to follow it. Instrumental does not mean quiet. These frogs have opinions.

Zoom out and the whole thing gets even more interesting. Frogs In A Pond, out October 23, was conceived as a continuous 40-minute suite inspired by Italian giallo cinema and European film scores of the '60s and '70s. Surprise Chef recorded almost entirely live over nine days and imagined the record as a soundtrack to a film that doesn't exist. “Tadpoles” certainly behaves like a scene from one: slightly mysterious, deeply funky and specific enough to suggest something is happening even if nobody has bothered to give us the script.

Which is fine. We don't need one. We survived “Leg Day,” we've enrolled in tadpole school and apparently an army is forming nearby. Whatever Surprise Chef are putting in this pond, we're drinking it.