Will Cullen Hart, a founding member of the Athens, Ga., indie-rock collective Elephant 6, died Friday, Nov. 29, of a heart attack, according to a statement on the Elephant 6 website. One of the co-founders of Elephant 6 musician Robert Schneider , shared that Hart died “suddenly, peacefully, and in a very happy mood around the release of two new OTC songs”—Olivia's Tremor Control singles who recently released “The Same Place” and “Garden of Light.” Will Cullen Hart was 53 years old.
Born in Athens in 1971, Hart grew up in Ruston, Louisiana, alongside Snyder, Bill Doss and Jeff Magum. As teenagers, the four made house recordings under the Elephant 6 banner, and after graduating high school, Doss, Hart and Mangum moved to Athens, where they formed Olivia Tremor Control. Snyder ended up in Denver, Colorado, where he founded the Elephant 6 Recording Company to release music produced by the band Apples in Stereo. Hart, a visual artist, created most of the artwork for his own band and others associated with the collective.
Olivia Tremor Control released their first proper album, Music From the Unrealized Film Script: Dusk at Cubist Castlein 1996, the year after Mangum left the group. More music followed before the group disbanded in 2000. The following year, Hart formed Circulation System and released the new band's debut album. Both his bands remained dormant until 2009 when Olivia Tremor Control reunited and Circulation System shared their second album. Signal Morning. However, Olivia Tremor Control's resurgence was slowed by the death of Bill Doss in 2012.
Hart's final album with Circulation System, Mosaics Within Mosaicswas released in 2014. That same year, a documentary on Elephant 6 was announced, and it would eventually see a wide release in 2022, as A Future History Of: The Elephant 6 Recording Co.
“Will was endlessly talkative, endlessly funny, endlessly expressive, endlessly creative,” wrote Robert Snyder in his eulogy for Hart, “He was endlessly loved by me and his bandmates and the Elephant 6 and Athens communities ».
