Google “Golden Boots” and you’re treated to an only-on-the-Internet twist on Choose Your Own Adventure: Arizonan psych/rock or Singaporean line-dancing?
“Maybe that’s where (bassist/engineer) Nathan (Sabatino) found it,” says Golden Boots co-founder and co-frontman Dimitri Manos. “This Eastern European line-dancing crew—he’s in the middle of talking to them now. He sent them (new single) ‘Country Bat High,’ and they said if we do a Muzak version of it, they would dance to it.”
“We’ve got to get a video out of this,” says singer/guitarist Ryen Eggleston.
The song, a strangely natural backdrop for two-stepping given its relaxed 4/4 rhythm and sun-baked Western façade, is featured on The Winter Of Our Discotheque (Park The Van), issued in January. Depending on who’s counting, it was either the four-piece band’s fourth or 14th release. “[We’ve] done recordings together since 2001 … either handed out to friends or sold for a couple bucks (on tour),” says Manos.
“Love Is In The Air” (download):
The two met in Tucson after each had relocated from the Northeast. The 29-year-old Manos is from New Jersey; the 34-year-old Eggleston hails from Pennsylvania. The band’s early output consisted of home-studio experimentation that arose from fooling around with Manos’ four-track. By 2007, when the duo signed to Park The Van and was asked to tour with Magnolia Electric Co., each within a matter of days, songs that began as 20-minute tape collages adopted more pop hallmarks. “Winter Of Our Discotheque and (2007 digital release) Burning Brain are more cohesive, in that songs begin and end,” says Manos without a hint of irony.
Experimenting seems woven into the Boots’ DNA, however. Through Mike Dixon’s one-man imprint People In A Position To Know, the group has issued both a double-grooved vinyl LP and a seven-inch emblazoned on a veterinary X-ray. “Hold it up to the light and you can see a horse’s backbone,” laughs Manos. “[Dixon] said he could do all this stuff, and I thought he was insane. I’ve since realized that he’s insane, but he really does all this stuff. Two days ago he successfully made a seven-inch completely out of chocolate.”
Similarly, much of Discotheque’s sonic profile—a trippy, peyote-laced desert trek with Odelay-era Beck and The Soft Bulletin-era Flaming Lips as docents—stems from endlessly creative tweaks and twitches: delay pedals, instrument overdubs and multiple machine digestions. A song might be born on an eight-track, quarter-inch tape machine, then get bounced into a four-track for additional sounds, then head to 16-track, two-inch tape for final maturation.
“These guys are tape heads,” says Park The Van’s Chris Watson. “They love experimenting with sound and volume.”
But Manos still insists the best bits come from a single Dictaphone. “To me, it’s the perfect sound,” he says. “It’s like a field recording. Anything with more tracks than [that] and you’re getting into trouble.”
—Noah Bonaparte Pais
