Biography All Music GuideWikipedia
All Music Guide:
As much a concept as a band, the Olivia Tremor Control was one of the most visible and innovative members of the Elephant 6 collective, a coterie of like-minded, lo-fi indie groups -- including the Apples in Stereo, Neutral Milk Hotel, and Secret Square -- who shared musicians, ideas, and sensibilities. The Olivia Tremor Control was led by singers/songwriters/multi-instrumentalists Will Cullen Hart and Bill Doss, natives of the small, isolated town of Ruston, Louisiana, where they struck up friendships with fellow outsiders Robert Schneider (who went on to front the Apples) and Jeff Mangum (the auteur behind Neutral Milk Hotel).
Throughout high school, the aspiring musicians -- all influenced by the likes of the Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Zombies, Pink Floyd, and Sonic Youth -- exchanged home recordings and played in each other's bands. Hart and Doss later attended Louisiana Tech University together, where they tenured as college radio DJs and furthered their musical educations and ambitions. In 1990, Hart, Doss, and Mangum moved to Athens, Georgia, to form the group Cranberry Life Cycle; when Mangum exited, they enlisted John Fernandes and became Synthetic Flying Machine. After Doss' temporary defection to Chocolate USA, Synthetic Flying Machine mutated into the Olivia Tremor Control at much the same time both Schneider and Mangum relocated to Denver, Colorado, to start their own respective projects.
In 1995, the OTC (later fleshed out by "technical advisor" Eric Harris) debuted with the EP California Demise, the first chapter in an ongoing series of high-concept recordings built around the surreal plot of an imaginary film conceived by Hart and Doss. The follow-up 7", "The Giant Day," led directly into the group's 1996 debut double-LP, Music from the Unrealized Film Script "Dusk at Cubist Castle," a sprawling collection of Beatlesque psychedelia, popcraft, and tape loops culled from some 200 unrecorded songs. (The first few thousand copies of the album also included a bonus disc of ambient "dream sequences.") Keyboardist Pete Erchick officially joined prior to 1999's Black Foliage: Animation Music by the Olivia Tremor Control, another epic work that consolidated the group's underground popularity and widened the Elephant 6 cult.
However, breakup rumors swirled around the group during 2000, and it was confirmed that the OTC had gone on at least a temporary hiatus toward the end of the year. In the meantime, the group's earliest recordings -- including California Demise and "The Giant Day" -- were reissued on CD as Singles and Beyond. Bill Doss remained active, releasing an EP titled Future History of a Sunrise Fix with his new project, the Sunshine Fix. His fans were shocked and saddened by the news of his death on July 31, 2012; Bill Doss was 44 years old.
Wikipedia:
The Olivia Tremor Control is a psychedelic rock band that was prominent in the mid-to-late 1990s. It was, along with The Apples in Stereo and Neutral Milk Hotel, one of the three original projects of The Elephant 6 Recording Company. The band was founded by the remnants of the group Synthetic Flying Machine (Jeff Mangum, Bill Doss, and Will Cullen Hart) in 1994. The band went on hiatus in early 2000, and later reformed in 2009.
An announcement revealed that Bill Doss had died on 31 July 2012, with The Olivia Tremor Control confirming his death on their official website. The cause of his death has not yet been revealed.Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist}} template (see the help page).
Sound and History[edit]
The band's distinct sound is a mixture of Doss and Hart's pop and experimental tendencies. This chemistry is evident in their albums given that some tracks are 2–3 minute songs, while others are electro-acoustic collages ranging in length from 2 seconds to 10 minutes, and differing in content from vibrant horns to near silence. Furthermore, the band released a record of experimental electro-acoustic music, The Late Music, Volume One, under the name The Black Swan Network, in 1997. Another Black Swan Network release, a 7" EP on the Happy Happy Birthday to Me label, appeared in 2000, though it did not feature Bill Doss. In October 1997, a "collaborative" LP between The Olivia Tremor Control and The Black Swan Network was released, originally as a tour-only item, and later put out as a CD by Flydaddy, which gave the record the title, The Olivia Tremor Control vs. The Black Swan Network, though the band had never wanted the record to be named as such.
The band is influenced by the odd quality inherent in dreams and asked their listeners to send in tapes describing their own, examples of which can be heard in the final track of Black Foliage and the OTC-BSN collaborative LP. While their debut album Dusk at Cubist Castle focuses more on complex vocal harmonization and upbeat melodies, Black Foliage is more noise-oriented, with more feedback samples and tape loops.Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist}} template (see the help page).
Other projects[edit]
The members of The Olivia Tremor Control embarked on a variety of different projects before and after the band broke up. Eric Harris released a record under the name Frosted Ambassador and later two CD-R releases under his own name on Cloud Recordings, the label founded by Fernandes and Hart in the wake of OTC's demise. Pete Erchick released three records, Individualized Shirts, Special Fanfare For Anything and Lost in the Pancakes, under the name Pipes You See, Pipes You Don't. Bill Doss followed OTC by putting out records as The Sunshine Fix, a name he had used years before. The Sunshine Fix has evolved from a recording project to a formal working band. Hart's post-OTC project, Circulatory System, has taken a similar route. The self-titled 2001 LP continued the melding together of pop and experimental traditions the OTC had worked on and won high accolades from the press. Jeff Mangum followed OTC with Neutral Milk Hotel, releasing On Avery Island and In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, as well as a few "underground" acoustic demos.
Signal Morning, Circulatory System's sophomore LP features the reunion of Will Hart and Bill Doss singing harmonies on its opening track. Signal Morning was released on 8 September 2009 on Cloud Recordings.
Reunion[edit]
In 2005, the Olivia Tremor Control temporarily reunited, solely for live shows, at the behest of the All Tomorrow's Parties festival. They appeared at a UK version of the festival, preceded by warm-up shows in Athens, Georgia and London; that summer, they again played Athens, at the Orange Twin Conservation Community, as well as gigs in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and L.A. In the fall of 2008, all members of the Olivia Tremor Control toured with other members of the Elephant 6 collective as part of the Holiday Surprise tour. In May 2009, Will Hart said in an interview that the band had recently re-entered the recording studio: "We've got two songs for the next Olivia record, in my opinion. They're on Bill's hard drive."
In March 2011, Elf Power drummer Derek Almstead confirmed that he was engineering and playing percussion on the new record and that new material would be debuted at All Tomorrows' Parties later in the year. In addition to this, they have released a song titled North Term Reality under Olivia Tremor Control for AUX Vol. 2.
In September 2011, the band released the single The Game You Play Is In Your Head, a 3-song suite. It is unknown whether or not the song is a single from their new album. More live shows are planned including an appearance at the ATP Curated by Jeff Mangum festival in March 2012 in Minehead, England. On January 17, 2012, it was announced that OTC would play the fifth Austin Psych Fest April 27–29, 2012 at Emo's East in Austin Texas. OTC performed at the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago's Union Park on July 13, 2012.
On July 31, 2012 the band announced the death of Bill Doss. The cause of death was not specified.Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist}} template (see the help page).
