Golliwog has the ambience of a horror movie: dissonant strings, like nails on a chalkboard, form the basis of the track Star87; agonised screams are sampled throughout; every so often, an ominous drone will fill a song to the point of overwhelm. On that level alone, New York underground icon Billy Woods’ latest album would be a feat of sound design, and one of the year’s most engrossing, unnerving records. Of course, this being a Billy Woods record, that’s just scratching the surface.
Golliwog’s horror aesthetics are a counterpoint to its tales of real, everyday nightmares. Through samples, guest verses and his own lyrics, Woods unearths innumerable images of inhumanity: stories of CIA torture methods, “12 billion USD hovering over the Gaza strip”, a class of professional “zombies” willing to turn a blind eye to the working class that makes luxury possible.
It’s heavier, if only slightly, than Woods’ usual output. He still finds time for moments of beauty amid the bleakness – the gorgeous saxophone that ends Maquiladoras; the fuzzy synth sample on Pitchforks & Halos; the beat on Make No Mistake that feels almost adjacent to dance music – but Golliwog is dominated by inherited trauma and state-sanctioned terror, and Woods assesses it all with horrible clarity. You could call it a haunted house of an album, but that would be optimistic – you’d be hard-pressed to believe Woods sees a clear way out.
