Utah Saints are an English electronic music duo consisting of members Jez Willis and Tim Garbutt. Utah Saints were described as “the first true stadium house band” by the KLF’s Bill Drummond, though their music is difficult to place into one genre. The dance group originally met as music promoters and DJs for the Mix Nightclub in Harrogate in the early 1990s. They began as MDMA (Mega Dance Metal Allegiance), featuring two former The Cassandra Complex members Jez Willis and Keith Langley, along with Bobby Rae and guitarist Martin Scott. Willis started The Utah Saints with the addition of Tim Garbutt. Langley played the drums with the band in the early days and has provided artwork and photography for a number of their releases.
They first had chart success under the name Utah Saints with the singles “What Can You Do For Me” (UK No. 10), “Something Good” (their biggest UK success at No. 4) and “Believe in Me”, a UK No. 8 chart hit, which they described as their vocal sample trilogy. “What Can You Do For Me” featured samples from Eurythmics’ “There Must Be An Angel (Playing With My Heart)” and Gwen Guthrie’s “Ain’t Nothin’ Goin’ on But the Rent”. “Something Good” heavily sampled Kate Bush’s “Cloudbusting” and “Believe in Me” was based on “Love Action” by Human League and “You Gave Me Love” by Crown Heights Affair. The fourth single “I Want You” was based around a sample from the Slayer song “War Ensemble”.
Contrary to rumours, the band was 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. Additionally, Bush sold Utah Saints footage from the video of her original song. 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 UK Dance Chart. The track featured new remixes by Van She, High Contrast, Prok & Fitch, eSquire, Ian Carey and more.
Utah Saints then moved away from vocal samples with singles such as “I Want You” (sampling thrash metal band Slayer) and “I Still Think of You” (Jez Willis providing original vocals on both). The latter was on the soundtrack to the film Shopping and DJ Tim briefly appears in the film Utah Saints also had three songs — “Hands Up”, “Techknowledgy” and “Sick” — featured in the hit video game Carmageddon TDR2000. Their song “Sick” was included on the 2002 PlayStation 2 soundtrack Wipeout Fusion. Another single, “Power To The Beats” featured on the FIFA 2001 football game.
After their debut album, the self-titled Utah Saints, and one further single “Ohio”, which was based around samples from the Jocelyn Brown song “Somebody Else’s Guy” and “That’s The Way I Like It” by KC & the Sunshine Band, Utah Saints seemed to disappear for several years. They were busy doing remixes (for 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 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 to come up with hits, and instead write music they wanted to hear. They reappeared in late 1999 with charting singles “Love Song” and “Funky Music Sho’ ‘Nuff Turns Me On” (featuring Edwin Starr on guest vocals), plus “Power to the Beats” and “Lost Vagueness” (featuring Chrissie Hynde). They also issued the album, Two, which included samples from Michael Stipe from R.E.M., Joyce Sims, and a track with a sample from Metallica – the first time a sample had been cleared by the band.
