As rave music came to dominate the British charts in the post-acid house boom of the early-90s, Utah Saints were one of the most successful acts to emerge.
Today, as a two-person DJ team, Utah Saints continue to thrive. Their 500+ club nights they have promoted in Leeds and Edinburgh remain a strong part of club history and they continue to program The Ring stage at Lancashire’s legendary Beatherder Festival.
Formed in Leeds in 1991, the group consisted of Jez Willis and Tim Garbutt. Jez, a former fanzine writer, mobile DJ and rock band bass player, and Tim, a skilled DMC finalist DJ from Harrogate, started collaborating when Jez brought Tim a rough track featuring an Annie Lennox sample.
Their debut track, What Can You Do For Me, incorporated samples from Eurythmics and Gwen Guthrie. Pressing 1,000 orange vinyl records, they sent one to Pete Tong at BBC Radio 1, who played it immediately, leading to a slew of record labels vying to sign them.
Signing with London Records, their next hit, the Top 5 Something Good, sampled Kate Bush’s Cloudbusting, and remains to this day the only sample usage Kate Bush has ever granted. The song’s iconic stuttering refrain “U-U-U-Utah Saints” became widely recognized.
The self-titled album went Top 10 in the UK and earned Utah Saints 3 Top 10 singles. Recorded at Lion Studios in Leeds, the album skilfully mixed various genres and featured an adventurous selection of covers and samples from artists as diverse as Simple Minds, and Human League, to Sylvester and Slayer.
As they developed into a live band in the early 90s incorporating rock, dance and hip-hop elements, playing bigger and bigger shows and conquering the charts, the sampler became their lead singer and turntable scratching acted as their lead guitarist.
The KLF’s Bill Drummond described Utah Saints as “the first true stadium house band”, an idea they ran with a year later, supporting U2 on the European leg of their Zoo TV Tour in 1993.
Utah Saints’ have rightly earned their place as pioneering figures in electronic dance music, with “Something Good” and “What Can You Do For Me” having been revisited and re-entered the UK Charts in both the 00s and 10s respectively.
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