A long-lost album by Thailand's leading funk band sounds more like the set-up for a practical joke than something most folks would want to seek out, but the Impossibles have gained a potent reputation among crate diggers in recent years, and 1975's
Hot Pepper shows the band had much more than novelty going for them. Led by vocalist and guitarist Setha Sirachaya, the Impossibles were one of the biggest acts of the 1960s and ‘70s in their native Thailand, playing original pop tunes as well as covers of then-current rock and R&B hits from the West, and they released a handful of successful albums on local labels. After a successful tour of Europe, the band signed a deal with the Dutch Philips label, who flew them to Sweden to cut the sessions for
Hot Pepper; the results lack the melodic eccentricity and stylistic range of their Thai releases, largely because there's only one band-written original song on the album, with covers of American hits dominating the track listing. But the Impossibles also sound tighter and more emphatic on
Hot Pepper than they did on their Thai releases, and though their local releases leave a lot to be desired in terms of production and fidelity,
Hot Pepper sounds punchy and professional, with the clarity doing wonders for the thick basslines, funky percussion and trap drumming, and lively horn charts. Their cover of "Love Will Keep Us Together" comes off like unremarkable disco by numbers, but the two
Kool & the Gang numbers nearly match the originals for ferocity and groove, and the Impossibles' version of "Easy to Be Hard" from Hair gives the tune a deeply soulful undercurrent that fits just right. And the title track, written by keyboard player Pracheen Songpao, is one of the album's best numbers, a hot instrumental with funky breaks that practically beg to be sampled. If the Impossibles were big fish in a small pond as Thailand's number one funk band,
Hot Pepper shows they could have gone elsewhere and still made a major impact; this is polished but powerful vintage R&B that's bound to please fans of ‘70's funk and soul. ~ Mark Deming