Ship Sket is 26 year old Josh Griffiths. Originally from Dorset, hes lived in Manchester for seven years and forged his own path within the citys 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 its about spirituality, fetish, and latent darkness hidden by outward appearances. Josh says about his process I like happy accidents, messing around and resampling, and kind of seeing how far I can push stuff before it disintegrates in front of me. Not so much deconstructed so much as derailed; Ive heard my tunes on a club system and gone wow that mix sounds bad, but the tune is still popping. My approach is a lot more stylistic than it is technical. 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. This approach to writing is manifest throughout InitiatriX. Take Vendettas Theme (ft. Charlie Osborne) - a pounding drill beat covered in a layer of filthy distortion with demonic vocals rapping about spiders, alchemy and isolation - the vocals and sample chops forcing their way through the songs web of grit; or the subtle intensity of Mimikyus slow paced and ornate strings, cast against repeated cute bleeps and incidental details to form a hypnotic club tool. Permanent Kigurumis lonely melody, cloaked in a haunted atmosphere, rubs against explosive drill drums and a vocal snatch whispering Just Like You. Ship Skets music is strange and beguiling, rough and sensuous all at the same time.