Will Cullen Hart, a founding member of bands the Olivia Tremor Control and Circulatory System and a co-founder of the Elephant 6 music collective, died at 53 on Nov. 29 from natural causes. The news was confirmed by Apples in Stereo musician Robert Schneider in a lengthy Facebook post that celebrated Hart's contribution to music.
Hart's death occurred on the same day as the release of two new Olivia Tremor Control singles, “Garden Of Light” and “The Same Place,” the band's first new music in 13 years.
“I am deeply heartbroken on this day of celebration of a new Olivia Tremor Control release, to announce that my dear friend and Elephant 6 Recording Co. co-founder, W. Cullen Hart (Will to his friends), passed away this morning of natural causes, suddenly, peacefully, and in a very happy mood around the release of the two new OTC songs,” Schneider wrote. “Will was a genius experimental and psychedelic pop musician, a brilliant and prolific visual artist who sketched and made collage art every second of every day, on every object within reach. 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.”
Born June 14, 1971 in Athens, Georgia, Hart grew up in Rustin, Louisiana, alongside Schneider, Bill Doss, and Jeff Mangum. Doss and Hart formed the Olivia Tremor Control in 1993 and subsequently released two albums, 1996's Dusk at Cubist Castle and 1999's Black Foliage. The group disbanded in 2000, but reunited in 2009 after Hart and Doss reconnected after Hart was hospitalized from multiple sclerosis, from which he suffered for nearly two decades. After Doss died in 2012, the remaining band members decided to keep playing and confirmed in 2023 they were working on new music.
After Olivia Tremor Control's breakup, Hart performed in Circulatory System, a psychedelic rock group he formed with Derek Almstead, Suzanne Allison, Peter Erchick, John Fernandes, Charlie Johnston, and Heather McIntosh in 2000. The band released multiple albums, including 2014's Mosaics Within Mosaics.
The musician was a co-founder of the Elephant 6 Recording Company, a musical collective started in Ruston, Louisiana in the 1980s and that expanded to Athens, Georgia and Denver in later years.
Schneider praised Hart as “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 left as children – together .”
“Will was infinitely chatty, infinitely funny, infinitely expressive, infinitely creative,” Schneider wrote. “He was energetic, sweet, tender, earnest, alternately totally chill and totally explosive. Will suffered from multiple sclerosis for almost two decades, which gradually reduced his mobility, his ability to play guitar, and his ability to tour – but 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 confirmed the intention for Olivia Tremor Control to release new music following Doss' death. The two singles released this week were made during the filming of the recent Elephant 6 documentary. “It was a huge effort, the whole band came in to play, my brother-in-law and collaborator Craig Morris came in to help engineer, and we felt a sense of great momentum,” Schneider wrote. “This is captured really nicely in the film, it was a very moving recording experience. Even so, grief and disorganization made proceeding hard from there. It took years just to finish the two songs.”
He added, “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, bears fruit.”
