inthemix | Features | Utah Saints: Still bringing us something good

“You want the best and you got the best, the hottest band in the world!”

I can’t help it, but every time I think of Utah Saints, that phrase jumps into my head along with the distant roar of a revved-up crowd cheering in the background. While admittedly it’s actually a sample taken from a KISS live album, for me it was its use in the intro of Utah Saint’s first single What Can You Do For Me? that it will forever be remembered. It takes me back to 1992, and the first time I ever heard the band. I was living across the road from the Newmarket Swimming pool here in Brisbane. At around the same time every afternoon I would hear this awesome track belting across the street as the local synchronized swimming team practiced their routine. The song was Something Good, and it used samples from one of my favourite artists Kate Bush and her song Cloudbusting. I thought it was the best thing I’d ever heard in my life.

Well it’s been a long time since 1992, long enough for the baby that I gave birth to that year to inform me that Something Good has been reborn and is now the biggest dance track doing the rounds. Again! The Van She remix has a whole new generation of dance music fans tuning in to the magic that is Utah Saints once again. Hallelujah! With a string of highly successful sample-based dance tracks in the early nineties, the duo of Jez Willis and Tim Garbutt went on to produce a range of remixes and tracks for a plethora of artists stretching from Blondie and Simple Minds to believe it or not, even The Osmonds! ITM got the chance to catch up with one half of Utah Saints, DJ Tim Garbutt to chat about the science of making great sample-based dance music, what they’ve been up to all these years, as well as to find out what’s in store for Saints fans at the upcoming We Love Sounds festival tour.

So how did Utah Saints start out and what’s with the name?

When we started out back in ‘91 we were both DJing in a club in Leeds. I was playing on Saturday nights and Jez, my partner, was DJing on Friday nights. We had both made different music before in different bands and we both had this love of dance music at the time. So we thought we’ll just make a dance record and see how it goes. So we both went into the studio and then we came up with What Can You Do For Me? and yeah, that was our very first thing. We never planned to start a band or anything, but from day one it kind of took off and had a lot of success world-wide. As for the name, well we wanted a name that wouldn’t pigeonhole us into one type of music. We just always liked the word ‘Utah’ so we thought of the name Utah Saints.

This 2008 version of Something Good, how did that come about?

We were kind of planning on putting a remix out anyway at some point, but we really like what Van She have done with that version. We went back into the studio and re-recorded our original version and then we sent them out. They then took the original part and then added some new parts. Then Van She actually came out with that mix and we were totally happy with it because it was totally faithful to the original. It’s got the bits of the original, you know: the whole piano, the vocals, and everything and yeah we were totally happy with it, but it wasn’t a planned thing. It just kind of happened.

So how do you create something as good as Something Good?

We had a plan to sample Kate Bush at the time, but we didn’t have an idea of what line to do or anything like that. We just spent a lot of time listening to all her work and trying different things. You can’t make a record like that, like plan it, really it’s one of those things that just happens. We were really lucky to find that sample. I’m always kind of amazed at how big a record it has been over the years. And the good thing about it now is that it’s now coming around to a whole new generation of people. Everyone around my age knows the record, and now people who are like seventeen and eighteen are listening to it, so we’ve got a whole new audience this time around. I’ve got a daughter at school too, and all her friends are now getting into it, whereas a year ago none of them would’ve have heard of us.

So what have Utah saints been up to since the nineties?

After all the success in the early nineties, we basically took a bit of time out. We’ve done a few gaming and movie soundtracks and we run two club nights in England. Basically we just took a long time out to work on some other projects. We were still both doing stuff under different names and still DJing every weekend, and we’re both still doing that, so that’s totally where our heads are at, and now the whole thing has kind of coming around again, so we’re planning on doing a few new things and we’ll see how it goes.

I came out to Australia recently for the Good Vibrations festival as Beat Vandals, which was really good as it was a bit of a side project. So it doesn’t really feel like I’ve ever been away. Because we’ve been out doing stuff all the time, it doesn’t feel like we’ve been away at all.

And you’re coming back to Australia for the We Love Sounds tour soon?

Yeah, I’m really looking forward to that. On that we’ll be doing DJ sets, but we’re planning on making it really entertaining. Most of the stuff we’ll play will be our own edits and our own versions of stuff. We take a lot of tracks that you know and mess around with them, so it’s gonna be a great show.

So do you prefer DJing to producing?

I like to do both DJing and producing, I think they both kind of work off each other. I think if you’re out DJing all the time it’s a lot easier to produce because you get to know what works. The only way you can make dance music that really, really works is to be out there as a DJ, not because of the money you make from it but because it’s the best way to find out what works. If you’re out there DJing and you play other people’s songs you’ll know when the intro is too long, or too short, and you think: “If I did that I’d make it longer.” It just saves a lot of time when you’re making your own music.

Any plans to do a remix of your classic What Can You Do For Me tune?

We will remix our old records again, but I think the next thing we do will probably be a new record. We kind of have a lot of ideas, but at the moment we’re just concentrating on doing the new music. I’m actually off to the studio today because it’s 10.40 in the morning here in the UK and I’m going in to lay down a few tracks for the new record. It’s always a lengthy process trying to make something that we’re really happy with.

How do you come up with a new track?

We basically start with it could be a good beat or like a bass line or a little loop from somebody else’s record, or a good sample. Then something in there works and you build on that. With all the records we’ve ever done, one thing is that we try to never take the essence out of someone else’s work. Like, we never use something out of the chorus, for example. Like with the Kate Bush sample, it was a little line out of one of the verses, like just a small part from someone else’s record. I mean the easier way to do it would be to take someone else’s record and just remix it, but the harder and more creative way to do it is to sit there for ages poring over old records trying to find just the right line to use.

Ready to experience Something Good for a new generation? Check out the Utah Saints at the following shows…

Fri 30 May – Bustin, Wollongong
Sat 31 June – Canberra, Warehouse Winter Festival
Sat 31 June – Warehouse Official Afterparty @ Academy, Canberra
Sun 1 Jun – Perth, We Love Ministry
Fri 6 Jun – We Love Sounds @ Platinum, Gold Coast
Sat 7 Jun – We Love Sounds, Melbourne
Sat 7 Jun – We Love Sounds, Brisbane
Sun 8 Jun – We Love Sounds, Sydney
Mon 9 June – Adelaide, We Love Sounds

And check out the clip for the reborn Something Good below…