Imagine my excitement earlier this year when I heard a gravelly voice dissecting, with humour, charm and irreverence, all of my areas of interest: annotating Nietzsche on DMT in Berghain; raving in a Kyiv bunker with Putin’s mercs closing in; stashing wintry literature in A-Cold-Wall gilet; spawning from a cocaine coma, but it wasn’t coke, it was fentanyl, and three of your friends are dead; and getting your ass beat in year 10 over Joanna. Tapping in with culture’s resident critic, who, second to psychedelic pintor Teódulo Rómulo, has the coolest name I’ve ever heard. Live in print, London’s one, London’s only: Agostinho Zinga.
After pleasantries at Liverpool Street we sit down at a decent café. I treat myself to a festive flat white, and as a gesture of thanks for his time I extend Zinga a cup (brown) of water (tap). I sit back and let the beau gosse speak on A to Z.
On his era promoting parties:
“I wanted to be able to put on one fun party for my friends every month. We did that for a while, but number one, I remember reading in a book about nightlife—the AIDS epidemic in New York—that nightlife scenes only last four years. Whether it’s Studio 54, The Loft, whatever, you have a four year run with that group of people, when it’s booming, setting trends, launching careers. To do it properly, to design the artwork for the flyer, to program the actual event, figure out what kind of sound you’re going for, it’s super gratifying. So as much as I say it was annoying and I hated it, I’m thinking of dipping my toes back in again. What movie was that? The Godfather. Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in...”
On techno tourism:
“Leave on the last plane on a Friday night and come back on the first plane on the Monday. I still love it. I went to fucking Frankfurt to go to Robert Johnson, one of the best clubs in the world. And as a city, Frankfurt is shite. Like I couldn’t believe how shit it was. Like legitimately one of the worst places I’ve been to in my life. But it had, like, one of the best restaurants in the world, called Plank or something, and it also had one of the best clubs in the world. Back of it overlooks this river where people go out and smoke. In the night, it’s dark, but when the sun comes up, you’re seeing the sun come up through the shades. But as a city…holy shit.”
On Paris:
“When I went the first time I fucking hated it. Hated the people, hated everything about it. Then the one moment you meet just one person, you immediately see why people fall in love with the city. You’re sitting outside a café; you’re going for a walk for hours; you’re having a cigarette, you don’t fucking smoke; suddenly you’re in this fucking bar with lightbulbs hanging everywhere, ordering 15 euro cocktails and you’re like, I’m having a blaaaast. So I’m going to go back and give it another go. I need to give Berlin a pause.”
On Honestly Nevermind, six months removed:
“I liked it, man. We forget that a commercial artist like Drake isn’t really an artist. He’s more so a brand, a corporation, a conglomerate. When he decides, ‘Nah, I’m not just gonna make Take Care number two, I’m gonna go and make a house record’, when no one wants to hear that, it’s always rated. I think of that fucking Kanye album, 808s & Heartbreak. I remember being on forums when that came out, everyone hated it. You hear him crooning over electronic beats; it sounds weird. But down the line, Kid Cudi comes off the back of that, Travis Scott comes off the back of that. Don’t be surprised if next season in Ibiza, Lil Baby puts out a fucking EP.”
On skateboarding, the one sport said to combine videography, music and style:
“For me, I always felt like I didn’t fit in anywhere super comfortably. Once I got into skateboarding, especially skateparks, you find so many freaky weirdos. On a Saturday, go to a local supermarket: grab some beers, these portable little barbecue things, shitty tins of beer, shitty sausages, some guy that’s clearly a crackhead. But he’s your best buddy though. He’s literally your best fucking buddy. And you’re there talking for hours and hours, solving life’s problems. I fucking loved it.”
On his brilliant Asian colleagues at Central Saint Martins (2005-2008):
“We’d do presentations, we’d get a brief, like, to redesign a Motorola phone. I’d be having it on shitty A3 bits of paper, hairy lines and shit, nothing pretty. And then they come through; motherfucker had it on a CD! Playing a presentation on a MacBook! Like, what? Like…Huh?! Like stuff was moving and shit and exploding down, like, HUH?! Like, what program is that? Ahhhh, shit! Here’s me with my little colouring, and my man comes in with an exploding diagram of—this new way to charge a phone. Some fucking guys, cunts, would come in with phone prototypes. It was a very intimidating place to be.”
On scene politics during his five-year tenure at Nike:
“It’s this obsession over having cool friends. Drives me crazy. How come everybody you’re proud of that you’re showing on Instagram, they all happen to have a really cool job? Why aren’t you proud of your friend that is now the fucking, I don’t know, area manager of a fucking Walmart? He got promoted from being the guy on the carts to the guy on the tills. Why isn’t that cool? Why is all your cool friends a photographer or a stylist? But they always liked that bowing down and paying homage. What’s that they say? Pay your dues. Which is basically code for suck my dick. Which I fucking hated. Let ME offer to suck your dick, but don’t TELL me to suck your dick.”
On The Agostinho Zinga Show, and conventional vs. independent media:
“If you actually started from zero and wanted to be the creative director of GQ, you start off interning in the mail room, you start doing some copy, you start maybe doing some proofreading, you start assisting, maybe getting coffees, and it feels like you’re getting somewhere. When you’re doing it on your own, what’s the feeling?
Is it a view? Is it someone buying a zine? Is it somebody inviting you to a show? What’s the mark that lets you know you’re on your way? You don’t know. It just happens.
I’ve had many people email me and say, ‘I went to FOLD because of your reviews.’ That’s actual influence. No one’s paying me to do that. I love the place, I’m telling you to go there, you respect my opinion enough to go and you have a great time and, oh, shit, now you tell other people and it becomes a thing. That’s something I’ve always looked up to: to be a singular person that has the ability to get people to go to a shitty burger bar somewhere that looks crap but is actually amazing—that isn’t the trendy place that everyone is going to. That’s influence. Fuck the rest of it.”
On releasing a zine, which his fans have been asking for:
“I’m not a perfectionist, it’s just the fear of shipping. Actually shipping is what separates the wheat from the chaff. Someone like a Virgil is a good example of how quickly you can ascend in your career if you just ship. That’s why he was so successful. You might not like his work, but he shipped everything, whether it was an idea, a t-shirt, a flyer, an album cover, a collection—ship ship ship ship ship.”
On Virgil:
“Go to his Instagram. Even if he drew it with the hand, ‘Okay, when I go play a gig at Fabric, I’m gonna draw these ten t-shirts, spray paint them and bring them to the show, kids want them and I’ll sell it for 10 dollars.’ Whereas you and I, it’s like, ‘Is it this show? Is it the one in January? Alright but…I didn’t get the tag done though.’ Just put a fucking Sharpie over the Fruit of the Loom tag and write Off-White, and then, boom, here’s the shirt. And essentially that’s what gets you those big things, ‘cause people see that you’re actually putting your money where your mouth is, ‘cause it costs money. It all costs money and takes time.
If you didn’t ship, it doesn’t count. That’s something I’ve learned. From the podcast myself, every time I quote-on-quote ship a show, it solidifies that idea. That’s the thing, it doesn’t matter, you did it. It’s in writing. It’s recorded. It’s time stamped. It’s there. Which I think is more important than just thinking about it. We’ve all got thoughts.”
Follow Agostinho:
YouTube https://www.youtube.com/c/AgostinhoThomasZinga
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/agostinhozinga
Twitter https://twitter.com/agostinhozinga
Soundcloud https://soundcloud.com/handsomeblackman