Rabit—the artist born Eric C. Burton in Houston, Texas—is a storyteller documenting the American South primarily through sound. He grew up on the East Coast before moving to Texas aged 21. Before making music, he was a prolific graffiti artist, but gave it up as costs started to spiral. “It became really expensive to keep getting arrested,” he told Mixmag. He began making music after listening to to Madlib and Pete Rock, and later he discovered the grime scene and producers like Zomby and Burial, who felt like an evolution of the dark electronic acts like Massive Attack, Portishead, and Björk that he listened to during his teenage years. After dozens of white-label releases, he officially appeared with his debut album, Communion, in 2015, and after that he has worked with Björk on her Grammy-nominated Utopia album and has since ventured more deeply into grime, hip-hop, post-industrial, and dream pop with a series of mix-tapes—most recently with LIL BOY, a collection of music he produced and recorded over the summer. (His latest album of original music, What Dreams May Come, is a collaborative multimedia record on his label, Halcyon Veil.) All this has established him as one of electronic music’s most bold and experimental artists and, on this edition of Influences, he delivers a selection of his favorite tracks from artists that continue to inspire his work.

“Sometimes the feel of a track hits you in the right moment and it resonates for a long time—
drum machine patterns, chants, bells, and whirs. Empty space, ephemeral noise locked in a tight coil, then moments with not a lot of space to breathe. In this mix you’ll hear some sounds that compel me to keep scraping the fringes of what we call electronic, dance, and rap, or more broadly the umbrella of street culture for me. Just your regular everyday beat geniuses telling their stories through loops, hitting buttons and keys.” — Rabit

XLR8R Subscribers can download the podcast below. If you’re not an XLR8R subscriber, you can read more about it and subscribe here.

Tracklisting

01. Art of Noise “Moments In Love”
02. Kstylis “Booty Me Down”
03. UGK “She Luv It”
04. DJ Blaqstarr & Rye Rye “Shake It To The Ground”
05. DJ Tylermania “Borkulator”
06. M.I.A. “Bird Flu”
07. 50 Cent “Ayo Technology” (Instrumental)
08. Ms. Cristal “Hoe You Just Mad”
09. Skyshaker x Samantha James x OG Maco “U NEXT”
10. Sugur Shane “Soulja Cunt”
11. Sugur Shane “Buddah vs Sugur”
12. Byrell The Great “Aktivate”
13. Skream “Midnight Request Line”
14. Logos “Alien Shapes” (feat. Dusk & Blackdown)
15. Zomby “Dusk & Blackdown Minimix 2009” (Eski Showcase) (Slowed)