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TfottcfUNi System
TRIUMPH OVER CHAOS AND ADVERSITY
irculatory System is putting the fin
ishing touches on its second album,
which at last mention was to be
called Blasting Through. It's also a
bit darker and heavier than the previous album
and just as—if not more—experimental than
the group's debut album... And with years'of
work on this project, expect Will Cullen Hart
and the crew to deliver a strikingly memorable
album.
S o said Flagpole way back in 2004, three
years after the release of Circulatory
System's first album. Five years from
that statement, the Circulatory System album
that was right around the corner way back
then finally greets its public. "That was John
[Fernandes], my other half, kind of announced
that," says Will Cullen Hart, the chief orga
nizer and songwriter for the band. "And it was
getting there, but not exactly, really. He didn't
know the full extent of my situation. And I
didn't either! Going to the doctor, brain scans.
That wasn't like me to not do finished stuff
before."
A few years back, Hart was diagnosed
with multiple sclerosis. The disease had been
affecting him for years before he or anyone
else was aware of it, and lesions growing on
the surface of his brain had a serious impact
on Hart's mood, actions and ability to process
information.
Hart is receiving steady treatment for his
condition now, and has reasserted control
over many aspects of his own life. He has to
inject himself every day to treat his multiple
sclerosis, and he'll have to do so every day for
the rest of his life. He says it can be annoy
ing, but that it doesn't bother him much any
more—it's become part of a routine for a guy
who didn't have any routines for a long time.
He's been painting more—his artwork has
always adorned the covers of albums from
Circulatory System and Olivia Tremor Control,
his previous band which was at the core of
the Elephant 6 music collective. What was
tentatively called Blasting Through is now
Signal Morning, released last month on Hart's
own Cloud Recordings label. It's a tight album,;
surprisingly rocking but still heavily psyche-
delicized and, according to Hart, it's able to
fit into just 45 minutes "all these pop songs,
but the buzzies and spades, too."
T he whole Elephant 6 crew gets tagged
with overt Beatles emulation, with the
Olivia Tremor Control in particular draw
ing on the band's White A/bum-and-beyond
period. It's not quite an easy formula to
shoehorn the bands into, but if that is the
case, then consider Circulatory System, and
much of Hart's songwriting, to be some sort
of nightmare-world version of McCartney's pop
sensibilities and surfeit of melodic ideas—the
second half of Abbey Road given over to the
growling demons instead, or Wings' output
minus the good cheer and drenched in exis
tential spelunking.
Of the two main Olivia.Tremor Control
songwriters, Hart often got pegged as the
sonic experimenter with Bill Doss the pop
genius. But as is the case with most collabo
rations between groups of fiercely creative
people, nothing's really as simple as all that. *
To give Signal Morning a listen is to descend
into depths of layered sound, sure, and an
almost giddy shunning of convention, but
tunes like "Particle Parades" and "This Morning
(We Remembered Everything)" are electrified
by the space between Hart's pop melodies and
the just as vital esoteric sonics, sound col
lages and ambient constructions.
O netime Athens resident Charlie
Johnston, who still plays with
Circulatory System and who had a
band here in town called The 63 Crayons, con
tributed a lot of work to Signal Morning, help
ing Hart edit together a number of the tracks
and work through much of the multi-tracked
decisions. Hart attributes most of the album's
cohesion and success, though, to his friend
Nesey Gallons. In fact, throughout most of our
interview, Hart often complimented Gallons in
the middle of statements about the specific
songs, turning to him and saying "You're so
cool! Thank you!"
Gallons, an on-and-off Athenian for the
past eight years who also plays in the Music
Tapes, met Hart and the Olivia crew when he
was a 15-year-old music obsessive in Vermont.
He moved to Athens the next year, in the
spring of 2001. Hart approached Gallons
about editing together and producing the new
Circulatory System with the explicit hope of
producing an album that clocked in at well
under the hour mark.
"I had all these songs in bits and I didn't
know what to do with them," says Hart. "He
and Charlie and the band helped me pick
and edit them. I said to him, 'Can we have a
45-minute record?' Which was shorter than
anything I'd ever been involved in. Which was
a crazy [goal]. Because of all the stuff! Could
we include all the stuff?" •
Says Gallons, "There were easily a hundred
songs, and a lot of different versions of the
same songs, and they all had great things
about them. For me it was just some kind of
feeling that just guided everything that made
it incredibly easy to do, and to express what
I felt could be expressed in the frame of a
45-minute album."
The tracks for Signal Morning come from
much of Hart's songwriting career, and both
the writing and the recording span the past 16
years. The album's opening track "Woodpecker
Greeting Worker Ant" comes from 1993, with
newer overdubs added, while the album's title
track was written and recorded with the intent
of working it onto Olivia Tremor Control's '99
album Black Foliage: Animation Music.
Heather McIntosh, the band's erstwhile cel
list, says of the album after Gallons' contribu
tions, "I think it needed to have some fresh
perspective on it. I think it was the only way.
Will heard us say a million times how awesome
it was, and we always meant it. But it was
good to have someone new [work on it]."
She adds, "This record has been such an
incredibly long time coming. Some of the
songs we've been working on since the '90s.
Early, early stuff. There's so many layers going
on there it's just such a relief to have it
done. We made it to the other side of the last
record! [Signal Morning] is really dense and
awesome, but there's a lot of room in there."
A lot of the overdubs and new additions to
Hart's original tracks were laid down last fall,
as the Elephant 6 gang practiced downtown
for the Holiday Surprise Tour, a revue-style
show that ran through songs from Neutral Milk
Hotel, Olivia Tremor Control, The Gerbils, Elf
Power and more. As the individual members
would get together to work on the show,
Gallons would recruit people as necessary to
record tracks for Signal Morning. Hart will
ingly gave up a lot of the decision-making, ~
but found that to be liberating. "Every single
stupid bit, every crash of a cymbal, had to be
a decision," he says about Circulatory System's
self-titled 2001 debut. "It's hard for me to
give up that control, but it's getting less and
less. When I put the album on... I don't usu
ally put my own albums, on... I mean, God!
But this one I can! I don't feel bad or self-
conscious. And a lot of times I'm listening
and rocking out and something happens that
I don't know is going to happen, and it's like
[makes a whooshing noise], and that's great!"
F reshly back from an East Coast tour,
Circulatory System is invigorated by its
time on the road. Two shows earlier this
year—a summer set at Farm 255 and a Nugi's
Space performance during AthFest—were
straight-up knockouts, and Hart calls them
some of his favorite shows ever. "Just stand
up and play!" Hart told himself at the time.
"Project better!" Those two sets presented a
united front not seen from Circulatory System
for a long time; a few years back, even, a lot
of people around the music scene wondered
about the continued viability of the band,
as performances like the improvisational
"Circulatory System Phase Two" devolved into
an inaccessible mix of half-mad cacophony.
"I
had the honor of living with Will
Hart," says A Hawk and a Hacksaw
bandleader Jeremy Barnes, also the
former drummer for Neutral Milk Hotel, "and
it was immensely enjoyable to go to bed at
night and listen to what he was recording in
the next room. He was a big inspiration for
me, in terms of finding what you love and just
doing it, whether or not anyone was inter
ested in it."
Signal Morning invites interest, and rewards
it accordingly.
Chris Hassiotis
22 FLAGPOLE.COM • OCTOBER 7,2009