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it and make it more interesting and creative,"
Hart says. When you put these two sensibili
ties together, you get a psychedelic sound
collage that is unmistakably the clear artistic
vision of The Olivia Tremor Control: sometimes
catchy, sometimes noisy, but always invested
in the investigation of sound-making. “How
can we liberate the world of sound?" a voice
calls out in one of the last tracks on the
band's second opus. Black Foliage: Animation
Music Volume One.
If there were a Norton Anthology of Indie
Rock, Olivia Tremor Control's two full-length
records would both be excerpted, perhaps in
the obscure or psychedelic subsection, with
a foreword written by Elijah Wood. The first
album, a sprawling 27-song concept record
called Music from the Unrealized Film Script,
Dusk at Cubist Castle is already considered a
classic. Recorded when grunge and flannels
were in vogue, Dusk at Cubist Castle re-set the
agenda of indie rock 3t a time when psych-
pop couldn't be any more unfashionable. And
while Hart and Doss appear stubbornly aware
of their influence, they admit to the desire
of taking part in a continuum of older bands
inspiring the "new generation."
In 2005 The Olivia Tremor Control briefly
toured at the request of Vincent Gallo for his
curation of the All Tomorrow's Parties event.
Any online rumblings since then about a so-
called long-standing feud between OTC's chief
songwriters have been overstated. In fact,
Hart and Doss have been quietly recording
music in each other's homes and studios at
least once a week since that tour, with the
rest of the band joining thereafter. Six years
later, the public has seen only one fruit from
these sessions: the nearly eight-minute three-
part suite "The Game You Play Is in Your Head,
Parts 1, 2, & 3," released earlier this year.
"We never set a deadline, but then we did
at some point say: 'We have all these new
songs; why don't we try and make a record?'
Once we got around two hours of material,
we thought we should probably cull a record,"
Doss says. "I call it '30 songs and bits', so
songs and things that link other things
together," Hart says.
The Olivia Tremor Control is also releas
ing limited-run expanded re-issues of its two
out-of-print double LPs on Nov. 15, through
Atlanta's Chunklet Industries. Featuring hours
of unreleased and rare tracks, these re-issues
are massive compilations of live material,
quadraphonic experiments, B-sides and com
pilation work. You can read this as a purge of
f
|l|! ;
"Over the past 10 years there's been a lot
more psychedelic music being made. What we
did at the time was very different from every
one else," Doss says.
Doss and Hart grew up together in
Ruston, LA with Hart being the first to move
to Athens. To hear Doss tell it, the whole
Elephant 6 Collective scene was a snowball
ing of fate: "Basically, Will moved to the
Virgin Islands and just had enough money to
return back to Florida and called a friend of
his, Lisa Norman, who lived here in Athens,
and that's how he ended up here. Then Jeff
[Mangum] and I used to come down here just
for fun and to see what Athens was all about,
and then at one point I moved down here...
Eventually, more and more people would come
to visit from Ruston, and they just moved up.
Essentially, we had all of these people here
around us from college, so it kind of felt like
we were back at home," says Doss.
While the excitement over The Olivia
Tremor Control's reunion is deserved, Hart is
quick to point out that the band never really
broke up. The band went on hiatus around the
turn of the millennium. Doss went on to pro
duce solo material as The Sunshine Fix. Hart
and John Fernandes made more experimental
music under the name Circulatory System.
Keyboardist Pete Erchick performed as Pipes
You See, Pipes You Don't, while drummer
Eric Harris released some material as Frosted
Ambassador.
everything Olivia Tremor Control that's "fit to
print" up until now. You should expect to see
a third album released sometime in 2012, and
although "one side is finished," according to
Hart, ine band currently doesn't know what
the thing will look like.
"The record will get done when it's done.
Our stuff seems to grow organically: we work
on things here and there, and things start
to take shape. It's essentially a sculpting in
sound," Doss says.
Still, with releases from John Fernandes,
The Music Tapes and of Montreal earlier this
year, the Julian Koster-organized Holiday
Surprise Tour and Jeff Mangum's recent resur
gence, it appears that, like The Olivia Tremor
Control, the Elephant Six Collective is as rel
evant today as it's ever been.
"Just like Olivia, around the turn of the
millennium. Elephant 6 just sort of phased
out. But now, there’s just something in the
air," says Doss. "Everyone came back together
right at the same time... Everything's opening
back up again." [Christopher Joshua Benton]
While Athens has experienced no short
age of effervescent pop songcraft in the past
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