ComfortComes

Review: 28 Degrees Taurus – Post Midnight Thrills

28 Degrees Taurus are from Boston. This fairly uninteresting piece of information came to me as a bit of a surprise. How very odd, thought I, whilst aurally filtering ‘Seeking Heat.’ Here is a band that sounds decidedly… Asian. Yet they are from the US of A, is this some sort of bigoted stereotyping on my part?
 
NO!!!
 
Thank goodness. As it turns out, 28 Degrees Taurus, the band, may be from Boston but its constituent parts are from all over the place. Ana Karina was born in Brazil and Jinsen is the one with the Asian heritage responsible for my totally justified and totally non-dogmatic pigeonholing.
 
It’s not bigotry in the least, because 28 degrees Taurus and Jinsen’s vocals have that breathless quality that also defines Yuki Chikudate’s (Asobi Seksu), Kazu Makino’s (Blonde Redhead) and Rie Takeuchi’s (Luminous Orange). I accept these three are all Japanese, and I am currently unaware of Jinsen’s precise cultural heritage BUT you get my drift.
 
Post Midnight Thrills opens with ‘Ecstatic Times Continuum’, another stereotype in its shoegaziness. This instrumental comes barrelling towards you at full speed, stops, and then transforms into the previously mentioned ‘Seeking Heat.’ Ana’s reverberating voice offers a nice shadowy contrast as it fills in the gaps left by Jinsen’s. ‘Electricity’ is her turn at the wheel and you hear the Slowdive influence in the voice that, when paired with the metallic, slightly wah-wah-ed guitar, results in the acoustics that would emanate from a band rehearsing in a very large, very haunted, and very deserted concert hall.
 
‘Universal Love’ has that ‘Asian’ sound again, this time enhanced by guitars that sound like modern variants of an East Asian lute. ‘Heart Attack’ is a standout because it really does stand out. Slower than its companions, it has a careful, glacial intro and plodding, cloudy vocals. As misleading opening sees the vocals fade to a halt, the instruments progressively increase in tempo and when Ana shows up again she has to pick up the pace to match.
 
Nothing new under the sun, here, but it’s a good year for spacey sounds and if you’re into the genre, you know that it’s not novelty you’re after. 28 Degrees Taurus aren’t unique but they do capture the essence of shoegaze without being overly derivative of any one band.