Will Cullen Hart, co-founder of the legendary Athens, GA indie rock collective Elephant 6 and musician with the Olivia Tremor Management and Circulatory System, has died. Robert Schneider, of the Elephant 6-affiliated band Apples In Stereo, revealed Hart’s demise “of pure causes” on Fb immediately (Nov. 29). The information arrives on the identical day the Olivia Tremor Management launched the singles “Backyard Of Mild” and “The Identical Place,” their first new music in 13 years. Hart was 53.
Cubist Fortress Ceaselessly: I’m deeply heartbroken on this present day of celebration of a brand new Olivia Tremor Management launch, to announce that my pricey buddy and Elephant 6 Recording Co. co-founder, W. Cullen Hart (Will to his mates), handed away this morning of pure causes, all of the sudden, peacefully, and in a really pleased temper across the launch of the 2 new OTC songs.
Will was a genius experimental and psychedelic pop musician, an excellent and prolific visible artist who sketched and made collage artwork each second of daily, on each object inside attain. He was a lifelong four-tracker, tape looper, spontaneous poet, sound collage constructor, deconstructionist of musical devices, and a really gifted composer of pop songs since we had been youngsters. I heard about Will earlier than I met him, a standard buddy instructed me, “You and Will Hart are precisely alike!” (We had been each very animated and loud.) I borrowed a cassette copy of Kiss Dynasty from Joey Foreman – future projectionist for the OTC – in center faculty, figuring out it had been loaned to Joey by Will, and cherished it. Will and I subsequently met at a Low cost Trick live performance, launched by a standard buddy (and future bandmate to each of us) Jeff Mangum, and have become youthful rivals in music, after which the closest of mates. I did return the Dynasty tape some years later.
Will was co-leader with Invoice Doss of the Olivia Tremor Management (whom I co-produced), bandleader of the Circulatory System, and was the non secular chief of the Elephant 6 artwork group that exploded in Athens, Georgia, within the late Nineties. He was my accomplice in crime in our teenagers and early twenties, my pricey buddy, roommate, bandmate, and we pursued a imaginative and prescient of artwork and music collectively our complete lives, to this very day, that we hatched as youngsters – collectively. Will was infinitely chatty, infinitely humorous, infinitely expressive, infinitely artistic. He was energetic, candy, tender, earnest, alternately completely chill and completely explosive. Will suffered from a number of sclerosis for nearly 20 years, which step by step diminished his mobility, his capacity to play guitar, and his capacity to tour – however he saved up his productiveness, his songwriting, his recording and his artwork, and lived life in a state of heightened creativity. He was infinitely cherished by me, and by his bandmates and the Elephant 6 and Athens communities.
I’m in shock on the lack of my buddy. I honor Will immediately, by filling in a bit of his legend. When Olivia Tremor Management co-leader Invoice Doss – additionally my pricey buddy and Apples in stereo bandmate – handed away in 2012, the OTC had been in full-swing recording an epic new idea album, with Invoice and gifted Derek Almsted working collectively to engineer and assemble the formidable double album. On Invoice’s dwelling studio wall was a chart stuffed with summary poetry and arrows, that was supposedly a map to the album. I signed on to assist end the manufacturing – and I used to be shifting to Atlanta for math graduate faculty at Emory. The plan was: weekends in Athens till the document was carried out. I heard all of the tough mixes, went over studio notes of Invoice and Will, and we had a plan to complete. However tragically, the weekend I moved to Atlanta was the weekend that Invoice died, the very day we moved in. He was fully invested within the new OTC document and stuffed with inspiration, and all of us vowed to complete the work. However grief held us again for years. It holds me again nonetheless. “Invoice has gone to the mountains,” Will stated.
Won’t ever misplaced focus, even in his grief, on the masterpiece he and Invoice had began. He saved the imaginative and prescient and the idea recent. However he’s not a studio engineer and had debilitating MS so he actually wanted the entire village to assist the trouble. Through the filming of the Elephant 6 documentary, C. B. Stockfleth was coming to Athens and Will had change into more and more passionate to work on the OTC once more. We arrange a session at musician-engineer Jason NeSmith’s dwelling studio to begin to fill within the mandatory overdubs and look towards ending a number of OTC tracks. Two songs, “Backyard of Mild” (Invoice’s music) and “The Identical Place” (Will’s music), had been nearly carried out so we centered on these, and obtained the overdubs completed from Invoice’s unique job listing, plus just a few new items with Will and me overseeing. It was an enormous effort, the entire band got here in to play, my brother-in-law and collaborator Craig Morris got here in to assist engineer, and we felt a way of nice momentum. That is captured actually properly within the movie, it was a really shifting recording expertise. Even so, grief and disorganization made continuing laborious from there. It took years simply to complete the 2 songs.
Together with Will and Invoice, and Derek who engineered the fundamental tracks and had carried out a lot work on the OTC album, Jason NeSmith is the hero of the ending of the 2 OTC songs. Jason and Will labored collectively on mixing the 2 songs, sending mixes forwards and backwards to me for remark, after which began to make progress in direction of different unfinished OTC tracks. Because of Jason, Will gained momentum, and new enthusiasm, and their studio collaboration blossomed during the last two years, even with MS affecting Will’s mobility increasingly more – he pushed ahead to the end fortunately, bravely. I’m so grateful to Derek and to Jason for his or her engineering work on the ultimate OTC album. Could the historical past of this basic band document the important position every of them performed as companions to Invoice and to Will. And Kelly Hart, Will’s spouse and his co-manager of the rebooted Elephant 6 label, is the hero of bringing the songs into the world. These lovely songs – maybe among the many finest psychedelic pop songs ever recorded – exist immediately, they’re on BandCamp and on the E6 documentary vinyl LP that got here out immediately, and Kelly instructed me that this morning Will was excited and pleased to see folks had been downloading it. At this time is a day of victory for W. Cullen Hart – his final day represented a triumph. At this time is the day that Will’s perseverance, his sincerity, his wrestle with MS, and his devotion to Invoice and their widespread imaginative and prescient, bears fruit.
My pricey buddy, my brother, my co-conspirator, my E6 co-founder, I’ve all the time cherished you and can all the time love you with the identical depth I had once we had been younger. You had been so wonderful, I can’t even imagine you existed. I’ll miss your love and your humor and your power and your brilliance ceaselessly. I’ll endeavor to assist your bandmates end your work, and I’ll ceaselessly be glad about your friendship and your love – my candy buddy and my best inventive affect. Could your journey to the mountains be lovely.
Take heed to “Backyard Of Mild” and “The Identical Place” beneath.