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Artist
Noahlewis' Mahlon Taits
12+ albums
jazzchamber jazzavant-folkSXSWminimal lo-fi string
about
Noahlewis’ Mahlon Taits is a group from Tokyo, and although their name sounds like a Hawaiian Band or a Cajun Group, they are indeed Japanese, and this fact provides some nice clues in enjoying their music. Their music is not traditional Japanese music nor are they a rock band just imitating American groups. They started as a type of 1920s string band, mixing string instruments like hawaiian guitar, mandolin, cellos, with haunting musical saw and some woodwinds. They sounded like a '20s group, playing just for fun in their local area. Their aim was not copying '20s music, but instead blended almost every kind of music they loved. Of course they loved country blue and dance bands, but also ethnic music from all over the world, as well as '50s R&B, Phil Spector, John Fahey, Joe Meek, Raymond Scott, Alec Wilder, Martin Denny, Sun Ra, "classical" music from Debussy to Reich and so on. (As you may guess, they are vinyl / 78rpm junkies and one of the members in the group has run the phonograph record shop NOAHLEWIS’ RECORDS in Shimokitazawa, for more than ten years.) They tried to mold and rebuild songs that they found on old phonograph records, so at that time they didn’t compose original songs. The group was formed in the late 1990s. Koya Abe (Hawaiian guitar, bass), who was a shop clerk in one of the few vintage record shops in Shibuya, started his solo project as NOAH LEWIS, which soon became an octet and was renamed NOAHLEWIS’ MAHLON TAITS. The group consisted of Midori Sato
