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.
