Will Cullen Hart, one of the co-founders of the many-tentacled Athens, GA psychedelic music collective Elephant 6 and guitarist/singer in associated bands Olivia Tremor Control and Circulatory System died on Friday (Nov. 29) at age 53.
The news was shared via a statement from one of Hart’s longtime friends and musical collaborators, the Apples in Stereo leader Robert Schneider, who said Hart died of natural causes “suddenly, peacefully an in a very happy mood” on the same day as OTC issued its first new music in 13 years.
“Will was a genius experimental and psychedelic pop musician, and a brilliant and prolific visual artist who sketched and made collage art every second of every day, on every object within reach,” wrote Schneider in an expansive, loving Facebook tribute announcing the his friend and collaborator’s passing. “He was a lifelong four-tracker, tape looper, spontaneous poet, sound collage constructor, deconstructionist of musical instruments, and a very talented composer of pop songs since we were teenagers.”
Schneider went on to describe the pair’s early musical experimentation in middle school after another Elephant 6’er, Jeff Mangum, introduced them at a Cheap Trick concert. He noted that Hart co-led OTC alongside late guitarist/singer Bill Doss — who died in 2012 at 43 — along with leading the post-OTC group Circulatory System and called him the “spiritual leader” of the sprawling E6 community, which formed in Ruston, LA in the late 1980s and included associated lo-fi psych pop acts Beulah, Of Montreal, Neutral Milk Hotel, The Minders and Elf Power, among others.
“He was my partner in crime in our teens and early twenties, my dear friend, roommate, bandmate, and we pursued a vision of art and music together our whole lives, to this very day, that we hatched as children – together,” Schneider wrote. “Will was infinitely chatty, infinitely funny, infinitely expressive, infinitely creative. He was energetic, sweet, tender, earnest, alternately totally chill and totally explosive.”
Schneider also said that Hart had battled multiple sclerosis for nearly 20 years, which eventually limited his mobility, as well as his ability to tour and play guitar, though he did continue to write songs. “He kept up his productivity, his songwriting, his recording and his art, and lived life in a state of heightened creativity. He was infinitely loved by me, and by his bandmates and the Elephant 6 and Athens communities,” Schneider said.
Born in Ruston on June 14, 1971, Hart met his future collaborators Doss, Neutral Milk Hotel’s Magnum and Schneider as teenagers at a time when they bonded over the psychedelic and garage rock of the 1960s and 70s and spacey krautrock sounds of bands such as Neu!, Can and Tangerine Dream. After briefly organizing under the name Synthetic Flying Machine, that mash-up of experimental sounds and influences morphed into his first band, Olivia Tremor Control, which released its six-song debut EP, California Demise, in 1994; the group featured Hart on guitar, Doss on bass and Mangum on drums, though the latter would soon take leave to focus on Neutral Milk Hotel.
The band’s mind-bending full-length debut, 1996’s Music From the Unrealized Film Script: Dusk at Cubist Castle, jumped from the guitar-forward, grungy opening salvo, “The Opera House,” to the clattering, off-kilter sounds collage on the “Frosted Ambassador” interlude, the chiming Beatles-esque ballad “No Growing (Exegesis),” and the album’s perfect paisley pop nugget single, “Jumping Fences.”
The 27-song collection that was said to be the soundtrack to a never-finished film was accompanied by a limited-edition bonus disc (Explanation II: Instrumental Themes and Dream Sequences) with nine trippy, drone-influenced ambient tracks (“Cycle 1-9”), which varied in length from 3:13 to more than 11:30 minutes.
With the musical differences between pop-loving Doss and experimentalist Hart becoming more evident, the band released its second, and final, full-length CD, Black Foliage: Animation Music Volume One, 1n 1999, which mixed up the band’s catchy pop hooks with atonal horns, found sounds and cacophonous tape loops in the style of the Beach Boys’ abandoned album Smile and landmark LP Pet Sounds.
The musical tensions reportedly reached a boiling point after the release of Foliage, with the band breaking up in 2000. Hart formed a new band, Circulatory System, which featured some former members of OTC, and, occasionally, Mangum. The band released three studio albums during its decade-plus run, including a self-titled debut in 2001, 2009’s Signal Morning and 2014’s Mosaics Within Mosaics, a swell as a 2001 remix album, Inside Views, and 2010’s odds and sods compilation Side 3.
Hart also issued two experimental noise albums in 2001, Circuits and Silver. OTC reunited for a brief tour in 2005, then again for some show in 2008, 2011 and 2012.
In his remembrance, Schneider wrote when Doss died in 2012 OTC were in “full-swing recording an epic new concept album,” a double LP that Hart never got to complete in his lifetime. “On Bill’s home studio wall was a chart filled with abstract poetry and arrows, that was supposedly a map to the album. I signed on to help finish the production – and I was moving to Atlanta for math graduate school at Emory,” Schneider said of the period more than a decade ago.
“The plan was: weekends in Athens until the record was done. I heard all the rough mixes, went over studio notes of Bill and Will, and we had a plan to finish,” Schneider said of the anticipated album that has yet to be released. “But tragically, the weekend I moved to Atlanta was the weekend that Bill died, the very day we moved in. He was completely invested in the new OTC record and filled with inspiration, and we all vowed to finish the work. But grief held us back for years. It holds me back still. ‘Bill has gone to the mountains,’ Will said.”
Even in his grief, though, Schneider said Hart never lost his focus working on the “masterpiece,” even as his “debilitating MS” took its toll. During the filming of the E6 doc, Schneider said Hart got reinvigorated and worked to finish two new OTC songs (which you can find on BandCamp now), the aching, jangly pop tart “Garden of Light” and the more serene, evocative “The Same Place,” which were both released the the day Hart’s death was announced.
“Today is a day of victory for W. Cullen Hart – his last day represented a triumph. Today is the day that Will’s perseverance, his sincerity, his struggle with MS, and his devotion to Bill and their common vision, bear fruit,” Schneider wrote. “My dear friend, my brother, my co-conspirator, my E6 co-founder, I have always loved you and will always love you with the same intensity I had when we were young. You were so amazing, I can’t even believe you existed. I will miss your love and your humor and your energy and your brilliance forever. I will endeavor to help your bandmates finish your work, and I will forever be grateful for your friendship and your love – my sweet friend and my greatest artistic influence. May your journey to the mountains be beautiful.”
The Elephant 6 story was told in director C.B. Stockfleth’s 2022 documentary The Elephant 6 Recording Co.
Check out some Hart’s best below.
