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 Control and Circulatory System, has died aged 53.

The musician died on Friday (November 29) from natural causes, as confirmed in a Facebook post from the Apples in Stereo frontman Robert Schneider. His death coincided with the release date of two new Olivia Tremor Control singles ‘Garden Of Light’ and ‘The Same Place’, which had marked their 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.”

Schneider went on to call Cullen Hart “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 hatched as children – together.”

“Will was infinitely chatty, infinitely funny, infinitely expressive, infinitely creative,” he continued. “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.”

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.”

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

He formed Olivia Tremor Control in 1993 alongside Doss, and they released two albums: 1996’s ‘Dusk at Cubist Castle’ and ‘Black Foliage’ in 1999, before disbanding in 2000.

They later reunited in 2009, following Hart’s hospitalisation from multiple sclerosis. Upon Doss’s death in 2012, the band decided to continue playing and in 2023 announced they were working on new music.

Following the band’s initial breakup in 2000, Cullen Hart formed the psychedelic rock band Circulatory System with Derek Almstead, Suzanne Allison, Peter Erchick, John Fernandes, Charlie Johnston, and Heather McIntosh. They released five albums together: their self-titled debut and ‘Inside Views’ in 2001, ‘Signal Morning’ in 2009, ‘Side 3’ in 2010 and ‘Mosaics Within Mosaics’ in 2015.

Fan tributes for the late musician have been pouring in over the weekend. You can read some below.

R.I.P. Will Cullen Hart, a true original who personified the restless experimentalism at the heart of Elephant 6. Olivia Tremor Control devoured the history of off-kilter pop music and spit it out into two paradoxically beautiful cacophonous collages. pic.twitter.com/5j2B8WL8dO

— Gaspar Noévémbér (@LazlosGhost) November 30, 2024

RIP Will Cullen Hart. Thanks for being the blueprint that more weird kids from Ruston, LA could follow. I’ll never forget hearing the first Circulatory System album and finding out the dude making those sounds was from my home town. pic.twitter.com/F49LCWtGzU

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

Will Cullen Hart has been a part of so much music I’ve dearly loved. I saw him with Ciculatory System opening for Neutral Milk Hotel, an evening I consider one of the best of my life. I’m crushed to hear that he’s gone. RIP https://t.co/xXlq6IoMlb

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

Very sad to hear about the death of Will Cullen Hart. Dusk at Cubist Castle and Black Foliage are absolute masterpieces, two of the most inventive and brilliant albums of the ’90s—music that will live on forever.

— Zach Schonfeld (@zzzzaaaacccchhh) November 30, 2024

Cullen Hart also co-founded the Elephant 6 Recording Company, a musical collective started in Ruston, Louisiana in the 1980s that eventually expanded to Athens, Georgia and Denver. The collective included the likes of Neutral Milk Hotel, Apples In Stereo, Elf Power, the Music Tapes, the Minders, the Gerbils, of Montreal, Beulah, Dressy Bessy, Great Lakes, and more.

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

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

The two singles released this week were recorded during the filming of the 2022 Elephant 6 Documentary. In his eulogy to Cullen Hart, Schneider wrote that they were “a huge effort”, adding: “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.”

“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.”