InitiatriX

Who better to release obscure UK drum juggler Ship Sket’s first album than legendary UK electronic music outpost Planet Mu? Since its founding by Mike Paradinas (aka μ-Ziq) in 1995, the label has established itself as a pillar for some of the UK’s most deranged dance music: It codified Aphex Twin and μ-Ziq’s Chuckle Brothers fuckery, typeset Luke Vibert’s acid-sodden liner notes, and unleashed Venetian Snares’ miasmic orchestral breakbeat.

The label’s 30th anniversary compilation, released earlier this year, also touched on other styles like jungle, footwork, and house. But much of the release felt defined by its older contributors—IDM linchpins who, ironically, contributed some of the blandest new tracks. Things weren’t all bad, though; track 8, “Dysentery,” came from a newcomer, 26-year-old English DJ Ship Sket (aka Josh Griffiths), and it didn’t sound like anything else on the tape. As a DJ, Griffiths is notorious for pulverising genres like 140, bassline, and grime. “Dysentery” felt far from any of those scenes, though; it superimposed serialist cello, pagan glossolalia, bit-crushed 808s, and UK MCs onto a beat that sounded like the slow collapse of a star.

Like Bassvictim, Griffiths sits on the fringes of the growing UK experimental scene, and his new album, InitiatriX, demonstrates his facility with electronic music that’s both genuinely experimental and built for the club. Opener “Frost Cake” sounds like playing Pixel Gun 3D on speed: crisp breakbeats, quicksilver squelches, filthy distortion. The title track is essentially an apocalyptic gamelan beat over a text-to-speech prose poem—a medium that would be easy to execute terribly—yet you can’t help but make a stank face. “Casting Call” features the masked mollusc-artist S280F and lands somewhere between Morton Feldman and Mica Levi. It’s the most overtly experimental track and still Ship Sket manages to configure it at jungle speed.

The tunes don’t meander or drag—important for an artist who approaches experimentalism with the crowd-conscious sensibility of more mainstream electronic subgenres. InitiatriX is not Overmono or Sammy Virji danceable, but more like Drukqs danceable. It harks to a moment after the synthesis of Aphex Twin and before the advent of Calvin Harris, when electronic experimentalism and danceability did not feel so mutually exclusive. Its songs are challenging without being overly cerebral and idiosyncratic without feeling inscrutable.

Griffiths grew up in Dorset before moving to Manchester, where he’s lived for seven years. Much of InitiatriX feels concerned with the concept of Englishness and the passage of time, ideas he initially explored on the 2024 EP England as a Succubus. Even when they’re being eviscerated, the sounds Griffiths uses are often emblematic of certain musical strains, like the rotted grime synths on “Locked In,” or the relentless hardstyle kicks on “Supermodel Mansion.” Even the hermetic artist Charlie Osborne’s incantations on “Vendetta” sound like a lost runic language. As jungle and house music veer sharply into the pop lexicon, do we risk forgetting the deep histories of these subgenres and the oppressive systems from which they arose? Think of Ship Sket’s music like a UV backlight applied to an ancient manuscript, illuminating the faded inscriptions of our past to make the invisible audible again.

Ship Sket: InitiatriX

$40 at Rough Trade

$38 at Amazon