Cubist Fortress Endlessly: I’m deeply heartbroken on at the present time of celebration of a brand new Olivia Tremor Management launch, to announce that my pricey good friend and Elephant 6 Recording Co. co-founder, W. Cullen Hart (Will to his buddies), 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.
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 proficient composer of pop songs since we have been youngsters. I heard about Will earlier than I met him, a standard good friend advised me, “You and Will Hart are precisely alike!” (We have been each very animated and loud.) I borrowed a cassette copy of Kiss Dynasty from Joey Foreman – future projectionist for the OTC – in center college, realizing it had been loaned to Joey by Will, and liked it. Will and I subsequently met at a Low-cost Trick live performance, launched by a standard good friend (and future bandmate to each of us) Jeff Mangum, and have become youthful opponents in music, after which the closest of buddies. 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 neighborhood that exploded in Athens, Georgia, within the late Nineteen Nineties. He was my associate in crime in our teenagers and early twenties, my pricey 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 youngsters – collectively. Will was infinitely chatty, infinitely humorous, infinitely expressive, infinitely inventive. He was energetic, candy, tender, earnest, alternately completely chill and completely explosive. Will suffered from a number of sclerosis for nearly twenty years, which step by step decreased 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 liked by me, and by his bandmates and the Elephant 6 and Athens communities.
I’m in shock on the lack of my good friend. I honor Will at the moment, by filling in a chunk of his legend. When Olivia Tremor Management co-leader Invoice Doss – additionally my pricey good friend and Apples in stereo bandmate – handed away in 2012, the OTC have been in full-swing recording an epic new idea album, with Invoice and proficient Derek Almsted working collectively to engineer and assemble the bold double album. On Invoice’s house studio wall was a chart full of 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 transferring to Atlanta for math graduate college at Emory. The plan was: weekends in Athens till the document was accomplished. 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 full of 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 isn’t a studio engineer and had debilitating MS so he actually wanted the entire village to help the trouble. Through the filming of the Elephant 6 documentary, C. B. Stockfleth was coming to Athens and Will had grow to be more and more passionate to work on the OTC once more. We arrange a session at musician-engineer Jason NeSmith’s house studio to begin to fill within the crucial overdubs and look towards ending a number of OTC tracks. Two songs, “Backyard of Mild” (Invoice’s track) and “The Identical Place” (Will’s track), have been nearly accomplished so we targeted on these, and acquired the overdubs completed from Invoice’s authentic activity 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 transferring recording expertise. Even so, grief and disorganization made continuing exhausting 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 accomplished 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 backwards and forwards to me for remark, after which began to make progress in the 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. Might the historical past of this basic band document the very 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 greatest psychedelic pop songs ever recorded – exist at the moment, they’re on BandCamp and on the E6 documentary vinyl LP that got here out at the moment, and Kelly advised me that this morning Will was excited and completely satisfied to see individuals have been downloading it. Right this moment is a day of victory for W. Cullen Hart – his final day represented a triumph. Right this moment is the day that Will’s perseverance, his sincerity, his battle with MS, and his devotion to Invoice and their frequent imaginative and prescient, bears fruit.
My pricey good friend, my brother, my co-conspirator, my E6 co-founder, I’ve at all times liked you and can at all times love you with the identical depth I had once we have been younger. You have been so superb, I can’t even imagine you existed. I’ll miss your love and your humor and your power and your brilliance without end. I’ll endeavor to assist your bandmates end your work, and I’ll without end be glad about your friendship and your love – my candy good friend and my best inventive affect. Might your journey to the mountains be lovely.
Take heed to “Backyard Of Mild” and “The Identical Place” under.