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Circulatory System ‘Controls’
Tour De Sprawl Benefit With
A Lot Of Help From Its Friends
FP: So the sound effects and audio
manipulations were all part of a master
plan?
WCH: I wanted a lot of it to sound
like an orchestra from another planet,
you know what I mean? I hope that the
textures came through like that. They're
supposed to be subtle, out apparent.
Any at"
somewRat fami
young, serious music fan with an ear to the ground (or
least to college radio in the last six years) should be
familiar with the Elephant 6 Recording Company collec
tive. The like-minded-kids-turned-veterans of the music "club"
cranked out all sorts of twisted, fuzzy, melodic, psychedelic pop and
rock for the better part of the '90s.
These days, one of the E6 mainstays is busily "on hiatus" and
going in two different directions. When young inulti-instrumental-
ists Will Cullen Hart Y, Bill Doss and John Fernandes formed the
Olivia Tremor Control in Athens back around '92 or so, they dug their
creative minds and souls into a pile of neo-psychedelic notions and
vintage pop inspirations. The band became one of the most innova
tive and influential of the E6 collective, along
side Neutral Milk Hotel, Elf Power and Apples
In Stereo. Its 1996 debut double-LP, Dusk At
Cubist Castle, was a sprawling flurry of ideas
inspired by the weirder Beatles Beach Boys
and Skip Spence popcraft. 1999's Black Foliage:
Animation Music By The Olivia Tremor Control
followed with a keen experimental edge.
Despite rumors of a band split in 2000, the Olivias insisted it
was on a "temporary hiatus" toward the end of the year. In the
meantime, core songwriter Bill Doss stepped aside into his new pro
ject, the Sunshine Fix and released a tidy, self-titled EP on the
Kindercore label. The other main members of Olivia Tremor Control-
Hart, Eric Harris, Peter Erchick and Fernandes—have collaborated on
a dizzying 22-song album titled Circulatory System and released it
last month on the new Cloud Recordings imprint.
The debut album—recorded in Hart's home studio and in Chris
Bishop's Radium Studios in Athens—features guest performances
from various luminaries out of Neutral Milk Hotel, Japancakes.
Flicker Orchestra, FableFactory, Music Tapes and other underground
acts. While not an Olivia Tremor Control release by name, there are
very few elements here that will be unfamiliar to fans of the band.
Flagpole caught up with Hart recently—just as the new album
was hitting the streets—and asked him about the new project:
Flagpole: Tell us how the new Circulatory System songs started
taking shape.
Will Cullen Hart: It all started a couple of years ago really. I
mean, I had a bunch of songs around. Some were a few years old.
Some of them I wanted to save for a certain mood. It's difficult to
explain, you know?
anc lyrics, but I felt like this was really a collaboration. The songs
really wrote themselves. It was fun.
FP: Where did the inspiration for the tunes come from?
WCH: Most of the songs were written off a couple of melodies.
We just went from there. That seems to be the way I write naturally.
At the end of it; it told the perfect story. I don't want to spell it
out, but it's kind of a "look within" kind of thing... the awareness
of the inherit nature of things and realizing that things are really
just one. The subject of "time" is really in question.
FP: There are a lot of strange
sounds and background noises going on
through the whole album. I couldn't
tell if they were instruments or what.
WCH: I love the home aspect-
like turning a crappy old mic to an
old guitar that's tuned in some weird
way and writing a song and having
people put layers of instruments over
it. But I'm also into the sound
effects, too. We try to use sound
effects to help tell a story... like it's
interrupting the music and taking
you to another world. They're not
sparing; I think they're used as tex
ture. There's lots of bells and hand
percussion recorded at various
speeds with different amoun f s of
reverb. There are recordings of birds
that I manipulated and tried to
make them sound otherworldly.
Those things are important to me.
FP: Did you have a specific sound in
mind when you started recording this
album? Were there any odd influences
making their way into the process?
WCH: I still like the Beach Boys approach from the Pet Sounds
and Smile stuff sonically. The way that they would have a rush of
instruments all bursting together and then get really quiet. I'm
really into that. I've also listened to a tape of this composer from
the 1600’s named Fresco Baldi Giralomo. He wrote stuff for huge,
magnificent pipe organs. It's not religious, it's just spiritual. He
called them "heavenly pitches." The tape had like a mile of staticky,
crackly shit from the old vinyl on it, so hearing it in that way is like
it's coming from another time. It really had an effect. Incredible.
FP: Who's playing drums on most of this?
WCH: Jeff Mangum plays quite a few tracks. Eric Harris plays on
a few, and I play on a few. It really is a mixture. On every track there's
more than one drummer, sometimes all at once, sometimes not.
FP: Have you heard or read any early reactions to the new album
that struck you as odd?
WCH: Somebody wrote me and said it was dark. I don't really see
it as that, but whatever. I see it as half dark. In the end, it says,
"You can find your own parade inside," like a happy children's song.
I don't see it as dark. It's more like a search. I want people to
embrace their joyous spirit or whatever, not go "Oh man, it's dark."
[Laughs] Maybe it's both. I think it's more aware than dark. I like it.
FP: It's not the "new" Olivia Tremor Control, right?
WCH: Right. I see parallels, but it's not the same thing.
FP: It sounds like this new album was collectively created by a
number of people. But weren't you sort of at the helm with the
writing and recording?
WCH: A lot of this stuff was overdubbed at home on a 16-track
digital deck. I might run various layers of different instruments,
through echoes and phasers and say, "This is what I'm going for."
Then John [Fernandes] will come in and add some little klezmer part
or add other melodies. I guess I wrote a lot of the basic song parts
Ballard Lesemann
WHAT: “Tour De Sprawl” Benefit with The Circulatory
System, David Barbe, Jack Logan, The Squalls,
Art Rosenbaum
WHERE: 40 Watt Club
WHEN: Thursday, October 11,9 p.m.
HOW MUCH: $7
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OCTOBER 10, 2001 • FLAGP0LE.COM 25