Ship Sket is 26 year old Josh Griffiths. Originally from Dorset, he's lived in Manchester for seven years and forged his own path within the city's welcoming and close-knit music scene, arriving on Planet Mu this autumn with his debut album InitiatriX. Sonically the album is a homage to the UK styles that Josh loves: dubstep, grime, drill and rap, but on an emotional level it's about spirituality, fetish, and latent darkness hidden by outward appearances. InitiatriX is a smeared mix of distorted pop, underwater drill, dubby musique concrète and the downright dada. There are dramatic string passages and naked piano; Josh drops from twitchy electronics to blooms of distortion, found-sound and lo-fi drum patterns and sometimes all those things at once. "I do think of production as a divine practice because it is a mass-channeling of creative force. Putting together a track is drawing down energy and organising it into the best possible shape, like a huge elaborate puzzle. Sometimes the tracks will write themselves, and that is a beautiful feeling." Ship Sket's music is strange and beguiling, rough and sensuous all at the same time.[info sheet from distr.]