Friday 14 March 2008

Utah Saints Digital Spy Interview

Sixteen years ago Utah Saints stormed the top ten with 'Something Good', an exhilarating house tune featuring a clever sample from Kate Bush's 'Cloudbusting'. It was one of several hits for the Harrogate duo, Jez Willis and Tim Garbutt, who went on to collaborate with Michael Stipe, remix everyone from Blondie to The Osmonds and even tour the world's stadiums with U2: how many dance acts can say that? Now, having been given a pulsating remix by Aussie electro outfit Van She Tech, 'Something Good' is heading for the top ten again. As Tim tells us, it's come as a bit of a surprise.

How did the remix of 'Something Good' come about?
"Well, it was all pretty organic. James and I are massive fans of music blogs, and it just turned up on one of those. The guys [who've remixed] it are from Australia - they're called Van She Tech. They made their own DJ edit of the track, freshening it up with some new beats, and passed it around among their mates. Pretty soon the DJs started playing and it really began to take on a life of its own. We'd been planning to remix it, so we offered them to help them out a bit. We dug out our old floppy discs, reconstructed the track and sent it out to them so they could really freshen it up."

Are you a fan of the new version?
"Yeah, because it wasn't a forced thing at all. I don't like it when record companies think 'Ooh, we'll make a few quid by remixing this record'. I think sometimes you can tell when things have been contrived. This thing started out as a DJ edit and it built because people were playing it. It was organic.

Read the full interview here