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Saints Alive!

Sampladelic rave pioneers the Utah Saints are back - although apparently they never actually split up.

Their second hit from the early '90s, the Kate Bush-sampling 'Something Good' is happening for them all over again – and they've got a hilarious new video to accompany the track.

The band play a small part in the video, but it's the Running Man who's the star.

Watch the 'Something Good 08' video here

Jez Willis and Tim Garbutt met in Harrogate, near Leeds, in the North of England, when both were putting on acid house nights in a basement club called The Mix. Jez had gravitated into electronic music through the industrial route (Front 242, Killing Joke, etc), while Tim was from electro and hip-hop - he was a semi-finalist in the DMC Turntablist Championships in 1988. Finding they had a lot of interests in common, the two immediately hit it off. Utah Saints were born.

"Our golden rule for sampling was to never touch somebody else's chorus," says Tim. "To use the essence of somebody else's song to make your song didn't seem right. It was cleverer to take a small part - the intro, part of a verse or whatever - and put it in a new context."

"We were sampling absolutely everything to make new tracks - and still do," admits Jez. "We still throw everything into the sampler, mess about with it until it's unrecognisable and then it's got its own sound."

Riding the crest of the rave, they soon had a hit with 'What Can U Do For Me', sampling Annie Lennox from The Eurythmics, and followed it up with 'Something Good'. They supported U2 at Wembley Stadium, sold a lot of records in America, and then… what? Find out in the March issue of DJmag – out Wed 27th February.