Early years Will Cullen Hart was born on June 14, 1971 in
Ruston, Louisiana. His parents, both interior designers, divorced and moved around the country, leading Hart to spend parts of his childhood in
Alabama,
Colorado, and
Texas before returning to Ruston in ninth grade. Among his friends there were future Elephant 6 collaborators
Bill Doss,
Jeff Mangum and
Robert Schneider. The teenagers shared a passion and interest in home recording, influenced by
John Cage,
punk rock,
krautrock, and 1960s
psychedelic bands like
The Beatles,
The Beach Boys and
The Zombies. Some of his earliest musical projects were his solo recording moniker The Always Red Society, which released its sole tape
Giant Chocolate Think Tank Blues in 1993 and reissued 2014, and Cranberry Lifecycle with
Mangum, a "little
4-track pop thing," which were spoken of very highly by
Schneider and remained highly sought after by fans until finally leaked in 2023.
Mangum,
Doss, and Hart then formed the group Synthetic Flying Machine, which evolved to become
The Olivia Tremor Control.
The Olivia Tremor Control The Olivia Tremor Control's first release was the
extended play (EP)
California Demise in 1994, which presented many of the band's signature elements, like, for example, complex vocal harmonization. After the EP, the band briefly disbanded, with Hart moving to
Denver, Colorado, before returning to Athens to reunite with Doss and record the band's debut album,
Music from the Unrealized Film Script: Dusk at Cubist Castle at Pet Sounds studio, with
Robert Schneider as producer. His artistic difference to Doss became evident during recording for the album, with Doss leaning towards pop music and Hart writing more experimental material. In line with his experimental leanings, Hart was influenced by the 1969
White Noise album
An Electric Storm which led to the splicing of his bandmates' songs with experimental electronic pieces in 1999's
Black Foliage: Animation Music Volume One. The album was as ambitious of an undertaking as
Dusk, and was met to positive reviews, with
Pitchfork's Paul Thompson describing it as "among the most satisfying psychedelic albums of any decade", going on to compare it to the Buddhist concept of
Bardo.
Circulatory System, Olivia Tremor Control reunion and death After the release of
Black Foliage, tensions grew between Doss and Hart. According to Doss, Hart wanted to take a hiatus from music, and was suffering from early symptoms of then-undiagnosed
multiple sclerosis. The two had a falling out, and the Olivia Tremor Control broke up in 2000, releasing both an early singles compilation,
Singles and Beyond, and a
John Peel session before moving off to other projects.
Doss would reactivate his solo recording project
The Sunshine Fix, and Hart formed his next project:
Circulatory System with some
ex-members of the Olivia Tremor Control, which released their
self-titled debut album in 2001 on
Cloud Recordings. A companion album of ambient noise and sound coloages known as
Inside Views was released as well, in a similar vein to
Cubist Castle companion album
Explanation II years prior. Hart also released two musique concrète albums under his own name that year,
Circuits and
Silver. The Olivia Tremor Control's gradual reunification process began when they were invited to play the UK music festival All Tomorrow's Parties in April 2005. This edition of the festival was curated by the actor Vincent Gallo The band started working on a new album, the as-of-2025 unreleased
The Same Place, and released two new singles, although the recording process was slowed after Doss' death due to an aneurysm at the age of 43 in 2012. Hart, and the remaining members, decided to continue working on the album in his memory, with Hart saying in 2019 it would be the band's final album: "We have three sides worth of songs done, though they're not sequenced properly yet to run three sides." 2009 also saw the release of
Side 3, an album of alternative mixes and b-sides from
Signal Morning, sequenced by
Olivia and Circulatory System drummer
Derek Almstead. In 2014,
Circulatory System released their third album, double LP
Mosaics Within Mosaics, also on
Cloud. On November 29, 2024, the Olivia Tremor Control released the singles "Garden of Light" and "The Same Place", the band's first new music in 13 years, as part of the soundtrack for the documentary
The Elephant 6 Recording Co. (2022). Hours later, E6 co-founder
Robert Schneider announced Hart had died that morning. The status of the as-of-yet unreleased 3rd Olivia Tremor Control album
The Same Place is unclear. == Personal life and death ==