Tingo Tongo: What We Know
4.9.18 by Mike Haley

Zingo Zongo, Vingo Vongo, Tingo Tongo. On the surface it all seems like nonsense, but pick a bit at the scab and get deeper down in there. You’ll see that it’s all still mostly nonsense… Let’s leave the Zingo and the Zongo and the Vingo and the Vongo be for the moment and focus on Tingo Tongo. What do we know?

Tingo Tongo appears to be a cassette label, but one that issues tapes the way a blender without it’s lid issues smoothies. They are, in a very real sense, a mess. A very specific mess operating totally below any known radar with the elegance and attitude of a wet sloppy joe. Their awkwardness is, of course, extremely lovable. Tingo exists in the rawest of zones. One where on-point techno and the audio from Freddy Got Fingered get issued in one swoop. With a MS Paint designed logo and tapes that are sometimes vacuum sealed Tingo Tongo have a hefty catalog while sporting a single-entry Discogs page (aka: barely a Discogs page). They also received this handsome review from Cassette Gods.

Who runs the label?
Mike Meanstreetz
Zack Vidal
NAME

Where are they from?
Southern California

“We like to make things difficult.” Zack Vidal said of the operation. “In the day and age of the computer life it’s pretty easy to find the complex emotional expressions and the painfully personal subjective obscurities of our modern society. With something like tapes, and DIY experimentation – to buy/consume media in the physical, to hunt and search the racks, dig through the crates, finding something that screams at you – that is part of the ephemera which fuels this growing interest in the experimental .”

Their Bandcamp page is sparse, as if everyone forgot the password for it (try “password69”) and couldn’t get new releases up, but it’s still loaded with goodies. Poopdood (think about that name for a minute) and Igor Amokian split a tape that sounds like a collection of beats that ate bad rest stop fish. Like, landlocked rest stop fish.

Who are some of the artist they have released tapes by?

BagLady
Bobby London
Bonus Beast
Burnt Dot
BUTTMUNCH
CMMZMMMG
Conrad Burnham
D.O.T.W.C.
Fenkoff
Igor Amokian
JESSOP & CO.
Joanna Swan
Johnny Baxter
k^ren
Name
Nothing Band
Parallax Beach
PRESENT
Psychic Eyeclix
poopdood
Squim
STADIUM
Teeth Gnashers
TENDHER
Unoperator
WHEREAS

Their Bandcamp may be somewhat trim, but the Soundcloud is burstin’ at the seams, clocking in at 167 tracks of tapes, live tracks, mixes, and who-knows-whats. Oh, and I’ve found out how to buy these tapes! And it’s super simple. Here are the instructions listed on their Soundcloud page:

BUY SOME TAPES BUY SOME TAPES BUY SOME TAPES BUY SOME TAPES BUY SOME TAPES BUY SOME TAPES BUY SOME TAPES BUY SOME TAPES BUY SOME TAPES BUY SOME TAPES BUY SOME TAPES BUY SOME TAPES TINGOTONGOTAPES@GMAIL.COM

So there. Email them I guess? Perhaps the mood will strike you and you’ll want to BUY SOME of this here War Hippy tape!? Give it a shot.

A swell place to land this puppy is the Tingo Tongo Youtube page where you’ll find a few music vidz. But the real money there is the animation that rivals the classic Skull Trumpet thing. Void of audio and only a few seconds long… promos I guess? I don’t know, but it’s just occurring to me now that Tingo Tongo IS the Skull Trumpet thing. They entertain and don’t give a fuck. That is what we know. Vingo Viva Tingo Tongo!