Origami Angel’s music is an explosion — of sound, of colour, of creativity. The Washington DC emo duo’s recent LP ‘Feeling Not Found’ offered a head-spinning deep dive into their approach, which is unsurprisingly top-to-bottom in its attention to detail. It even extends to matching merch designs to the sounds they have pressed to wax. “I try to make it as attached to the music as possible,” frontman Ryland Heagy says. “When we build out the aesthetic for an album, with the cover art, it’ll still be tied to the music.”
Prior to their UK tour kicking off in Nottingham on January 31, Heagy sits in for the latest instalment of The View From The Merch Table, lifting the lid on his love of a tote bag, why he treasures his vinyl and cassette collection and the nostalgia that inspires some of the band’s bright, playful designs.
What was the first merch item you bought?
“The first piece of merch that I got from a band that really meant something to me was probably The Obsessives. They’re a band from DC and I saw them at a house venue in 2014 or 2015, and it was one of the first smaller bands like that I’d seen that had merch and stuff there. It was the first time where I was like, ‘I cannot leave this space without getting something from them.’ I wore it to the point that it was falling apart, and I sized out of it eventually, too. I'm sure that had something to do with it falling apart. I wore that every week, at every show I went to.”
What was the most recent thing you got?
“My girlfriend and I got a tote bag from Firewalker, this hardcore band from Boston. That’s more what I'm into now because, in the last 10 years, I’ve got so many shirts, crew necks, wind breakers, whatever. I have everything I need, and now I’m after stuff that I don’t have, right? Tote bags are great, I can bring the groceries in with that and it’s so sick to see someone walking out of the show, like, ‘I grabbed the bag because I got three or four things.’ I’d love to do more in the functionality realm, sunglasses or something like that, or pop sockets for your phone.”
Growing up, what would you say your most treasured merch was?
“The thing in our circle was the Prince Daddy & the Hyena hoodie, everybody had one of those. I definitely wore that all the time at every cool show, that was a treasured piece for sure. They are my friends now so it’s even cooler. Honestly, though, a lot of my treasured merch would be vinyl. That’s the stuff that really, really meant a lot to me, like all The Obsessives records I got at shows. I started collecting cassette tapes for ‘Heck No, Nancy’, which is a really, really important record for me. I collected all of the vinyl variants for it and most of the tapes. Honestly, it took up a whole section of my dorm room at one point.”
What is your favourite of your own designs, past or present?
“Back in the day, we had this pink crew neck design that was two houses hugging each other across a fence. It had one of our lyrics, which was, ‘I've never felt so at home.’ I still see people bring that one out. It's really cute, and I love the shade of pink the design is printed on. But, more recently, we have a crew neck that we have out now, which is like a Polaroid thing. In the Polaroid font, it says ‘Origami’ but then underneath there are the rainbow blocks and on those blocks it says ‘Angel’ in a really small font. It almost just looks like it says origami, but then you can look at it a little more and be like, ‘Oh shit, it says Origami Angel.’ So that's pretty cool.”
Your designs are often quite bright and playful – what inspires that sort of aesthetic?
“Most of it comes from where we are aesthetically with the music at that point. The Polaroid thing is sort of hearkening back to this nostalgia for a bygone era of technology and that’s kind of where we are right now. It is tapping into things like that. We’ve got this other one that’s like a scene core shirt from back in the day, when bands like Beartooth or Of Mice & Men would have these crazy monsters with loads of eyeballs. We have a shirt that’s a CRT screen computer that’s steam-rolling through Somewhere City, which is a record of ours. It’s about trying to combine these elements of nostalgia and that’s kind of our thing right now.”
How vital is merch to keeping you going as a band?
“It’s pretty crazy to think about sometimes. Obviously, we spend most of our energy on music and playing shows. But it’s pretty incomparable what merch is able to do to us in terms of this being our livelihoods. If you just erased the merch sales from the past two years, this band might not exist anymore. It’s something that is able to keep bands like ours and so many others afloat. It’s the thing that we’re actually able to make profit off of when it’s not always easy to make profit off of streaming. It’s not always easy at the shows when you factor in travel, accommodation, all this other stuff. The merch is really the thing that you can count on at most points in time. Sometimes, I make the joke that although we spend so much time on music we’re really a T-shirt company. It’s incredibly important, and it definitely means the world to see people continue to support it.”
Origami Angel Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:
Fri January 31 2025 - NOTTINGHAM Rescue Rooms
Sat February 01 2025 - LEEDS Leeds University Stylus
Sun February 02 2025 - MANCHESTER Gorilla
Tue February 04 2025 - GLASGOW St Lukes
Wed February 05 2025 - BIRMINGHAM O2 Academy2 Birmingham
Thu February 06 2025 - BRISTOL THE FLEECE
Fri February 07 2025 - LONDON O2 Academy Islington
Sat February 08 2025 - BRIGHTON Chalk
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