| Utah Saints | |
|---|---|
| Origin | Harrogate, North Yorkshire, England |
| Genres | Electronic dance music Rave Dance-pop |
| Years active | 1990–present |
| Labels | London, Echo |
| Website | utahsaints.com |
| Members | |
| Jez Willis Tim Garbutt |
|
| Past members | |
| Luke 'Da Bomb' Gee | |
Utah Saints is a dance band based in Leeds, England. The music is produced by Jez Willis and Tim Garbutt, who are joined on-stage by other musicians whenever the band plays live. The band had a string of hit singles in the British pop charts in the 1990s, and were notable for their extensive use of sampling technology — in particular, their practice of manipulating samples from mainstream pop and rock songs and combining them with contrasting dance beats.
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They were described as "the first true stadium house band" (by Bill Drummond), though their music is difficult to place into one particular genre. The dance group originally met each other while as music promoters and DJ's for the Mix Nightclub in Harrogate in the early 1990s. Originally called MDMA (Massive Dance Music Alert), they first had chart success under the name Utah Saints with the singles "What Can You Do For Me" (UK #10), "Something Good" (their biggest UK success at #4) and "Believe In Me", a UK #8 chart hit, which they described as their vocal sample trilogy as those singles sampled Gwen Guthrie, Kate Bush and The Human League respectively ("What Can You Do For Me" also features a sample from Eurythmics). Contrary to one rumour, the band were not sued by Kate Bush over the use of a sample from Bush's track "Cloudbusting" in the Utah Saints track "Something Good" - the sample was legally cleared before use.[1] Additionally, Bush sold Utah Saints footage from the video of her original song.[2] This track, with new vocals by the singer and actress Davina Perera, experienced a revival in the clubs in 2008 and reached No.1 on British dance charts. The track featured new remixes by Van She, High Contrast, Prok & Fitch, eSquire, Ian Carey and more.[3]
Utah Saints then moved away from vocal samples with singles such as "I Want You" and "I Still Think Of You" (Jez Willis providing original vocals on each). Utah Saints also had three songs; "Hands Up", "Techknowledgy" and "Sick" featured on the hit video game, Carmageddon TDR2000.
After their debut album, the self-titled Utah Saints, and one further single "Ohio", Utah Saints seemed to disappear for several years, though they were still busy doing remixes (for a diverse range of artists including Blondie, The Human League, Hawkwind, Simple Minds, James, Annie Lennox and The Osmonds and the theme to the 1995 movie Mortal Kombat), and producing tracks for other artists such as Terrorvision. During this time, they recorded an album that was to be called 'Wired World' but was never released, and produced a handful of Utah Saints tracks that have not been released, with titles such as "Star", "Train" and "Rock".
The Utah Saints then took a break saying that they stopped before they got into a vicious cycle of people expecting them come up with hits and write music they wanted to hear. Tim toured America with Orbital, Moby and The Aphex Twin, while Jez Willis appeared on dance music station Kiss 105 in Yorkshire hosting a Sunday night show.[4]
They eventually re-appeared in late 1999 with charting singles "Love Song", "Funky Music" (featuring Edwin Starr on guest vocals), "Power To The Beats" and "Lost Vagueness" (featuring Chrissie Hynde), by releasing the album Two. Also in 2000, Utah Saints did the soundtrack for the video game Carmageddon TDR2000. In 2001, they supported Feeder on the second leg of their UK tour, but only played a DJ set. In 2002 they went back into hibernation only to surface again in 2008 with a single release.
The band are notorious for taking a long time in between their releases - their first album Utah Saints and follow-up album Two were released seven years apart.
They have also been working on projects under other names, such as BeatVandals, as well as developing their regular Leeds and Edinburgh-based club night 'SugarBeatClub'. They opened a new recording studio on the outskirts of Leeds with fellow Leeds DJs and producers Riley & Durrant in 2008.
In 2007, their previous hit "Something Good" was remixed by Australian producers Van She. Originally a bootleg, the Utah Saints approved it and got them to re-record it with a new vocal, that sounded like Kate Bush but in fact was a different vocalist. It was signed to the Ministry of Sound record label, who released it in January 2008, where it reached number 8 in the UK charts - their second biggest chart success, behind the original version of "Something Good" which had reached number 4 in 1992.
Released on iTunes on 11 January 2009 was the Utah Saints' club mix of Girls Aloud's "The Loving Kind". In November 2009, the band also produced a remix of Liverpool-based dance duo Killaflaw's "Set Me On Fire". This formed part of Killaflaw's third single and was made available digitally in December of that year.
In August 2010, Utah Saints announced the launch of a new record label called "Sugarbeats". The first release was Santero's "Drop the Bomb".[5]
Utah Saints play the Together Winter Music Festival in London at the Alexandra Palace on Saturday 26th November.
| Year | Album details | Peak chart positions | Certifications (sales thresholds) |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
| UK [7] |
US [8] |
|||
| 1992 | Utah Saints | 10 | 165 | |
| 2000 | Two | - | - | |
| 2008 | Freshtraxxx Vol 3 (mix album) | - | - | |