Richard X: Richard X Presents His X-Factor Vol. 1

Most of the talk surrounding bootleg mashups has centered on their weird hybrids–The Strokes + Christina Aguilera! Destiny's Child + Nirvana!–without paying much mind to the sum of their parts. The manufactured duos hold out their own charms, but the truly great mashups offer more than just unlikely novelty pairings: They question assumptions attached to certain artists, while more crucially creating a new kind of pop music from the tension and friction lurking in those artists' actual styles. Aguilera's polished soul came out over a rock background, Nirvana's sassiness swayed harder beneath Beyoncé Knowles' R&B snap, and so on. Richard X started out as one of many mashup-makers haunting the Internet, and while his Presents His X-Factor Vol. 1 doesn't rewrite conventional wisdom as it relates to big stars of the day, it goes a long way toward realizing mashups' reconfigured pop-scape. Playing with memories and homages that make song credits a matter of mere bookkeeping, X jams samples with mimicked covers and new vocals in hymns to pop music as it's soldiered on from the '80s. "Being Nobody" pairs instrumental bits of The Human League's "Being Boiled" with re-sung vocals from Chaka Khan's "Ain't Nobody," but the whole sounds like a timely hit rather than a clever juxtaposition. The same goes for "Rock Jacket" and "You Used To," which strain old calls by Spandau Ballet and Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis through reworkings too tight and crystalline to evoke a year earlier than 2003. X doesn't hide his debt to '80s new wave, but he pays it back with interest via production that's big on atmospherics and intricate rhythms. "Lonely" sounds like Basement Jaxx fiddling with low-bit-rate MP3s rather than big dance-floor anthems. "Finest Dreams" pairs Neptunes muse Kelis with more Human League and Jam & Lewis, in a sweet pop-and-lock love song. X keeps his reference points too '80s-focused to do mashups' anarchic appropriation justice, but his focus stares down a present era no less new in its vision of pop's staying power.