British music producer/DJ/remixer Mark Vidler is best known for his creative mash-ups (bootleg and official), which marry the instrumental from one famous track to the vocal of an otherwise incongruous other. Often, many such snippets are blended together in demented pop/rock harmony. Two brilliant examples issued under Vidler’s Go Home Productions banner are “Ray of Gob,” (Madonna vs. the Sex Pistols) and “Rapture Riders” (Blondie vs. The Doors).

While mash-ups have arguably been around in some form for some time, modern technology opened the floodgates. Vidler was one of the busiest producers of this new “Bastard Pop,” saying: “You don’t need a distributor, because your distribution is the Internet. You don’t need a record label, because it’s your bedroom, and you don’t need a recording studio, because that’s your computer. You do it all yourself.”

Vidler had an obvious passion for the genre. Not only were his mash-ups executed masterfully, he even designed virtual covers for many of them. Last September, Vidler made the complete library available for download, announcing he was taking a break to focus on original music (which explains why I’ve recounted much of this history in the past tense).

On Monday, Vidler returned with something new: “Physical Graffiti.” While it wasn’t his original intention to recall past glories, the track samples liberally from Olivia Newton-John’s ode to exercising one’s passion. On his MySpace blog, Vidler says a friend who heard a “simple, throbbing, electro riff” he’d been playing with suggested “Physical,” thinking it would fit well with the vibe. She was right, and to promote this sure-to-be banger, Vidler mashed up a video to match:

“Physical Graffiti” is scheduled to appear on the forthcoming Go Home Productions album, Kamizake Runway, out this summer. If Vidler can get the sample cleared, maybe he’ll go another round with Newton-John and resuscitate her otherwise brain-dead “Heart Attack.”