A / V MAGICK

“ART SHOW” 2015

42ND NORTHWEST FILM FESTIVAL FEATURE

‘DaisyHeroin, creating stop-motion videos that, with their surreal irreverence for pop-culture effluvia and high art, recall the work of Paper Rad, Black Dice, and Monty Python’s Flying Circusanimator Terry Gilliam. Dawson’s style of jerky movements, stream of hallucinatory absurdities, and stimuli overload complements the clips’ supremely strange and abstract electronic music, which he also composes under the handle T.” - THE STRANGER

“ONEONEONE” 2015

SECRET PLACE FESTIVAL PARIS SELECTION

Daisy Heroin, an artistic nom de plume of Colin Dawson, guitarist of Seattle band Stickers and formerly Haunted Horses. Daisy Heroin could very well become a solo musical project for Dawson, but for now he’s bringing his Terry Gilliam-esque cutouts to music videos from Poseurs, VHS and other weird art projects. - HOMETOWNSOUNDS DC

“TENET” 2016

Colin Dawson is evolving into one of Seattle’s most interesting double-threat artists. While many know him as the guitarist for wiry neo-no-wave group Stickers, Dawson also has been creating bizarre animated films under the Daisy Heroin handle, including Tenet and Art Show, which screen tonight. His visual MO is surrealism run amok: pop-culture détournement, hilariously illogical nightmare scenarios, frequent defacements and decapitations, and weird shit streaming from eye sockets. Daisy Heroin’s imagery is geared to freak you out and laugh yourself comatose, and his accompanying electronic soundtracks under the name T equal the visuals’ hallucinogenic preposterousness. - THE STRANGER

“THEE HOLY ONES” - 2016

Daisy Heroin—aka Colin Dawson—is back with a new short film, the first installment in a monthly series that will run on his website. Called Thee Holy Ones, the clip looks like Hieronymus Boschpaintings run through the whimsically sinister sensibilities of Monty Python's Flying Circusanimator Terry Gilliam.

Dawson, who also played guitar in the caustic post-punk group Stickers, has made a twisted, stream-of-consciousness fever dream whose imagery would take a dozen viewings to come to a hazy conclusion about its motives and meanings. Some of the elements that flit by: casual body-part severings; bizarre substances flowing from eyes and mouths; eyeballs becoming planets with eyeballs on them; a man o' war with an astronaut helmet, a pyramid drifting in space, the cover of Grace Jones's excellent 1982 LP Living My Life repeatedly floating toward the viewer. Basically, Thee Holy Ones parades the fucked-up morphings of dreams imagined while on the strongest hallucinogens, all set to a subtly unnerving electronic soundtrack—which he records under the name T—that exists in the subterranean realms of dark-ambient masters Lustmord and David Toop.

"The idea for the project came after a time when all my equipment started breaking down and I basically stopped making movies," Dawson explained in an email interview. "It seemed like a time to step back and try and look at things differently. However, I feel like I had too much mental energy from not creating, and turned into a bit of an insomniac. I didn't mind; I like getting into the weird sleep deprived mind. I'd lay in bed telling myself stories, or practicing different forms of meditations until I passed out. So, when I bought a new computer, it seemed necessary/fun to compile all those daydreams and practices into a movie. The project seems big, so my attempt to make it fun for myself, is to release it in chapters, month by month. Thee Holy Ones is kind of a crossing over into another world."

By the way, Stickers' new album, Joy, is their last, and it's worth a significant portion of your dwindling attention span. Recorded and mixed by Stranger Genius nominee Erik Blood, Joybursts with brilliantly brooding and abrasive songs that fling you back into an English bunker club circa 1982, where nobody's smiling and everyone's righteously agitated. Stickers are going on out on a low-slung high note. They will be missed.