Will Cullen Hart, Elephant 6 co-founder, has died aged 53

Will Cullen Hart, a founding member of the musical collective Elephant 6 and indie-rock bands Olivia Tremor Management and Circulatory System, has died aged 53.

The musician died on Friday (November 29) from pure causes, as confirmed in a Fb put up from the Apples in Stereo frontman Robert Schneider. His demise coincided with the discharge date of two new Olivia Tremor Management singles ‘Backyard Of Mild’ and ‘The Identical Place’, which had marked their first new music in 13 years.

“I’m deeply heartbroken on at the present time of celebration of a brand new Olivia Tremor Management launch, to announce that my expensive good friend and Elephant 6 Recording Co. co-founder, W. Cullen Hart (Will to his pals), handed away this morning of pure causes, instantly, peacefully, and in a really completely satisfied temper across the launch of the 2 new OTC songs,” Schneider wrote.

“Will was a genius experimental and psychedelic pop musician, a superb and prolific visible artist who sketched and made collage artwork each second of each day, 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.”

Schneider went on to name Cullen Hart “my accomplice in crime in our teenagers and early twenties, my expensive good friend, 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 kids – collectively.”

“Will was infinitely chatty, infinitely humorous, infinitely expressive, infinitely artistic,” he continued. “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 potential to play guitar, and his potential to tour – however he stored up his productiveness, his songwriting, his recording and his artwork, and lived life in a state of heightened creativity. He was infinitely beloved by me, and by his bandmates and the Elephant 6 and Athens communities.”

He added, “As we speak is a day of victory for W. Cullen Hart – his final day represented a triumph. As we speak is the day that Will’s perseverance, his sincerity, his wrestle with MS, and his devotion to Invoice and their frequent imaginative and prescient, bears fruit.”

Cullen Hart was born in Athens, Georgia in 1971, and grew up in Rustin Louisiana with Schneider and fellow Elephant 6 members Invoice Doss, and Jeff Mangum.

He fashioned Olivia Tremor Management in 1993 alongside Doss, they usually launched two albums: 1996’s ‘Nightfall at Cubist Fort’ and ‘Black Foliage’ in 1999, earlier than disbanding in 2000.

They later reunited in 2009, following Hart’s hospitalisation from a number of sclerosis. Upon Doss’s demise in 2012, the band determined to proceed taking part in and in 2023 introduced they had been engaged on new music.

Following the band’s preliminary breakup in 2000, Cullen Hart fashioned the psychedelic rock band Circulatory System with Derek Almstead, Suzanne Allison, Peter Erchick, John Fernandes, Charlie Johnston, and Heather McIntosh. They launched 5 albums collectively: their self-titled debut and ‘Inside Views’ in 2001, ‘Sign Morning’ in 2009, ‘Facet 3’ in 2010 and ‘Mosaics Inside Mosaics’ in 2015.

Fan tributes for the late musician have been pouring in over the weekend. You possibly can learn some under.

R.I.P. Will Cullen Hart, a real unique who personified the stressed experimentalism on the coronary heart of Elephant 6. Olivia Tremor Management devoured the historical past of off-kilter pop music and spit it out into two paradoxically stunning cacophonous collages. pic.twitter.com/5j2B8WL8dO

— Gaspar Noévémbér (@LazlosGhost) November 30, 2024

RIP Will Cullen Hart. Thanks for being the blueprint that extra bizarre children from Ruston, LA might comply with. I’ll always remember listening to the primary Circulatory System album and discovering out the dude making these sounds was from my residence city. pic.twitter.com/F49LCWtGzU

— Colby Falkner James (@colbyfjames) November 30, 2024

Will Cullen Hart has been part of a lot music I’ve dearly beloved. I noticed him with Ciculatory System opening for Impartial Milk Resort, a night I contemplate top-of-the-line of my life. I’m crushed to listen to that he’s gone. RIP https://t.co/xXlq6IoMlb

— Dr. Aaron, PhD (@aaronposting) November 30, 2024

Very unhappy to listen to in regards to the demise of Will Cullen Hart. Nightfall at Cubist Fort and Black Foliage are absolute masterpieces, two of essentially the most ingenious and sensible albums of the ’90s—music that can dwell on ceaselessly.

— Zach Schonfeld (@zzzzaaaacccchhh) November 30, 2024

Cullen Hart additionally co-founded the Elephant 6 Recording Firm, a musical collective began in Ruston, Louisiana within the Nineteen Eighties that ultimately expanded to Athens, Georgia and Denver. The collective included the likes of Impartial Milk Resort, Apples In Stereo, Elf Energy, the Music Tapes, the Minders, the Gerbils, of Montreal, Beulah, Dressy Bessy, Nice Lakes, and extra.

W. Cullen Hart (1971-2024) and Invoice Doss (1968-2012) of The Olivia Tremor Management, Circulatory System, The Sunshine Repair and founding members of the Elephant 6 Recording Co. pic.twitter.com/JVCJapsrd0

— Elephant 6 Film (@Elephant6Movie) November 30, 2024

The 2 singles launched this week had been recorded in the course of the filming of the 2022 Elephant 6 Documentary. In his eulogy to Cullen Hart, Schneider wrote that they had been “an enormous effort”, including: “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 transferring recording expertise. Even so, grief and disorganization made continuing exhausting from there. It took years simply to complete the 2 songs.”