On the follow-up EP to their full-length release, How Do You Like Your Love, these idiosyncrasies of the band are distilled to such an end that the band cannot get any more closer to what they are. In this almost constricted format of just a tiny bunch of songs, the band doesn’t give any room for experimentation, apart from what is ordinary to their sound. But what is ordinary to 28DT – even as a condensed work – is something quite extraordinary and marvelous.

The Post Midnight Thrills (PMT) EP is what one half of Love? would sound like if it were broken in two pieces. Take out the instantly accessible moody psychedelic numbers like “Single Suicide Mode,” “Waves Of Love,” “Low Light,” and “Wherever You Can Find It,” and you have something that has signs of PMT. But PMT is more melodic, which gives it a much greater, radio-friendly appeal.

In the absence of creative diversions, PMT stands as one cohesive 18-minute music piece. Even with the short songs and their small number (six), the EP is fulfilling, and it is precisely because the band doesn’t deviate much in its approach from number-to-number. The addition of instrumentals “Ecstatic New Times Continuum” and “Electricity” help break the monotony and create beautiful spaces that the subsequent numbers fill.

The edgy, ethereal mood that 28DT creates in the entirety of this EP with numbers that stay true to a strict course of direction works more wonderfully than if the album were to be picked apart into its short songs. The larger canvas is beautiful; though relatively short and fleeting, but beautiful nonetheless.

Review: 28 Degrees Taurus – Post Midnight Thrills

September 3, 2009 by Radhika Takru   
Filed under Albums, Reviews

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.

___________________________________________________________________

adequacy.net review

28 Degrees Taurus – Post Midnight Thrills

August 28, 2009 by David Smith   
Category: Albums (and EPs)

 

28 Degrees Taurus - Post Midnight Thrills

The Boston-based band 28 Degrees Taurus has two full-length albums behind it and has now put together six songs for its Post Midnight Thrills EP. These songs follow on from the last album pretty consistently, which means that the band has found its sound and has introduced refinements without going off the rails creatively. It’s funny: if a critic doesn’t like a band, he or she would use a phrase like “lack of growth” to describe this kind of consistency. After hearing the last album and wanting more, I find this EP a fine holdover until the next album.

 

The sound is shoegaze psychedelia. The trio manages quite a full effect for being just three people. What distinguishes 28 Degrees Taurus from others is singer Karina Dacosta’s vocals: a la Lush, she has a sweet delivery that soars about the cacophonous drums and guitar. On “Universal Love,” the choruses don’t even need words but instead make due with just drawn-out “ahhhs,” and it still works. “Seeking Heat,” an accelerated near-rock song, also gets a lift from its choruses. The clipped spoken-word verses have an odd quality that sounds unnatural and need those kinds of choruses for contrast (and, perhaps, redemption).

The guitars often have a constant, slow, wah-type effect to them, which may be the reason for giving an impression of earlier psychedelic influences. The drumming doesn’t ever surprise you but consistently catalyzes the songs’ movements and changes. It’s quite akin to Steve Shelley’s on the middle-period Sonic Youth recordings. Without the same dissonance, granted, this EP would make a nice companion to Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation even after all these years between them. And that includes Taurus’s Slowdive-driven “Heart Attack,” as well, because its finish rivals Sonic Youth’s “Silver Rocket.”

Given that it has only six songs, this EP doesn’t have the time or space to show off the band’s talents to the same degree as did their last album How Do You Like Your Love. It does, however, hold promise for the next album.