Utah Saints

Utah Saints were two men from Harrogate, Jez Willis and Tim Garbutt, who worked out in 1991 that the quickest route to the dance floor ran straight through everybody else's record collection. Their trick was the sample used as a weapon: a hook lifted from a mainstream pop, rock, soul or R&B song, cut up and dropped onto a beat that had no business being next to it, until the old tune meant something new. They wrote, produced and mixed everything themselves, and their self-titled debut album on London Records in 1992 carried "Something Good" onto rock radio's countdowns.

What set them apart from the faceless techno pack was the stage. From 1991 they took extra musicians on the road and played as a live band, one of the first electronic acts to do it, and they supported the Shamen and U2 across 10 stadium shows. Three UK top-ten singles in the '90s followed, along with number-one dance hits in Britain and America.

They'd been on the other side of the decks too, running clubs from 1988 to 1994, including Ricky's and The Gallery, where they booked the likes of Pete Tong, Carl Cox, Paul Oakenfold and Sasha. Later came their Sugarbeat nights, from 1998 to 2010, in Leeds, Edinburgh and London.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.