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Various Artists - Local Customs: Downriver Revival
| Ptchfork |
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Despite all the superlatives lobbed at the Numero Group's catalog, the descriptions that really stick often come from the reissue label's own liner notes. Along with the warm patina of age emanating from re-mastered recordings and the cracked, yellowing photographs, these narratives are prime examples of music anthropology, thick with details that amplify each song's impact. The label exceeds its own storytelling standards with Local Customs: Downriver Revival, a collection of music recorded at Double U Sound, a rec room turned recording studio in suburban Detroit. The 24-track guided tour through Double U's history is paired with a detailed multimedia DVD that includes a 30-minute documentary and an interactive sound vault with over 200 extra tracks, arranged by individual boxes of tape. It not only makes most bonus DVDs look like cheap wastes of plastic and time, it lets listeners virtually walk into the lost basement studio in Ecorse, Mich., and view some of the people and places that seeped into Double U's reels of tape. Proprietor Felton Williams, an unassuming Ford Motor Company electrician and member of the Church of the Living God, managed to piece together a truly DIY studio operation. While the self-taught electrical whiz's longed-for hit factory never materialized, his dedication and open-door policy unwittingly turned Double U and its small stable of labels, mostly active from 1967 to 1981, into a local music time capsule....full text |
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| Pastemagazin |
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The latest excavation in the Numero Group's redoubtable catalog comes from Ecorse, Mich.—seven miles down river from Detroit—and the basement of Felton Williams, a local electrician. There, in 1967, Williams (who played steel guitar in the Church of the Living God) opened Double-U-Sound studios. His recording sessions, mostly finished by 1973, covered garage funk (The Burgess Band), mod pop (Young Generation), honey-toned country-folk (Coleman Family), vocal ensembles (Junior Mays Group) and other local micro-genres, but mostly songs about Jesus. The resultant CD and DVD constitute God's work, musically, academically and liturgically. An absolute sweetness and primitive clarity pervades the set. Including the earliest sides of sacred-steel master Calvin Cooke, there are literally hundreds of surprises ranging from James Brown screamers and shattering piano ballads to the over 200 more cuts included on the documentary-enhanced DVD, so listeners can try song-sifting at home—minus all the disintegrating master reels....full text |
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| Hbdirect |
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A fascinating look at boutique recording in the Downriver region of blue-collar suburban Detroit during the late 1960s/early '70s, DOWNRIVER REVIVAL is, like many other Numero Group releases, as much about social and cultural history as it is actual music. Born out of a local pentecostal church, Double U Sound and its proprietor Felton Williams recorded anyone and everyone who walked through their doors. And while the set primarily focuses on the gospel music Williams released on his Revival label, there are also doses of Nuggets-style garage (Young Generation's "Running Mod"), sizzling slow-burn funk (The Explosions' "On the Way," which features a young James "Blood" Ulmer on guitar), and lo-fi doo-wop ("Round N' Round" by the Junior Mays Group). Still, Williams's devotional recordings are the true stand-outs here. The deeply soulful yet exquisitely rough vocal talents of artists such as Calvin Cooke and the brilliant Shirley Ann Lee could alone carry this set, yet it's the enigmatic production touches that give these performances a warm homegrown tone and push them into their own distinctive realm. Williams's steel guitar, in particular, guides many of these songs. It's played with no real connection to the instrument's usage in any conventional context, and the mood it helps create illustrates both the Downriver community's (and by default Double U's) relative isolation and its artists' quest to create an expansive and downright heavenly noise....full text |
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