- Woodside EP is a four-tracker of knobbly MPC house jams from Nas1, a Bologna-based duo whose records look to the Midwest for inspiration. (Their six-track debut, Super Quartet, closely echoed Kyle Hall's homespun funk.) Coarse textures and gummy beats are often par for the course on records like these, but Woodside is often too rough-and-ready for its own good. "Kokooo"'s ashen hi-hat scratches at Nas1's Rhodes keys like a dry cough, and "50k" overindulges in its low-pass filter.
"Exit 12, 13" is where Nas1 demonstrate some guile—on top of a loose hand-drummed loop, sunkissed synths and crunchy vocal samples are stirred into a pleasant groove. There are better versions of this sort of thing on the usually excellent Odd Socks label—Josh Tweek's "Space Kitchen," for example—but it does at least give Woodside its sole bright spot. "Substitues"'s satellite-bleep pulse is undoubtedly absorbing, but like a lot of what's here, it's little more than a sketch in need of some colour.
TracklistA1 Kokooo
A2 50K
B1 Exit 12-13
B2 Substitutes