Richard X: Richard X Presents His X-Factor Vol. 1 : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Under the name of Girls On Top, Richard X perfected the bootleg mash-up -- Whitney Houston vs. Kraftwerk, the Normal vs. Missy Elliott -- then abandoned it before last year's deluge of unauthorized remixes on the Internet. His sound-clashes cohered because he understood the link between the digital dance floor of the early Eighties and the overproduced sass of modern urban radio. On his album debut as a proper producer, he replicates some of the magic of Eighties club music with quantized, breathy vocals and merciless synth runs, as exemplified by the stellar "Finest Dreams," featuring Kelis. He's even more fun as a pop archivist, re-imagining "Walk On By" as a Star Wars fugue and enticing the angelic Sugababes into an industrial take on Adina Howard's frothy "Freak Like Me." For Richard X, yesterday isn't history; it's a template for manipulating today.

JON CARAMANICA
(RS 934, October 30, 2003)