Ship Sket * Initiatrix (Stic) [New LP]

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.