Elephant 6: the psychedelic art collective that revived the 1960s
Aside from those who live there, there probably aren’t too many people who would be able to tell you about Ruston, Louisiana or its history. A small town that was largely dependent on trade from the cotton farming industry after its formation in the late 19th century, it hasn’t produced many notable figures when compared to the larger cities in the state, such as Baton Rouge or New Orleans, with only a meagre 20,000 people residing there today. To think it would be the birthplace of one of the most celebrated psychedelic rock and pop collectives around the turn of the century seems absurd, but that’s only the beginning.
While Robert Schneider, Bill Doss, Will Cullen Hart, and Jeff Mangum were all attending the local high school, the four would bond over a mutual love of 1960s psychedelia and marvel together at the recording techniques employed by George Martin and Brian Wilson. This would then lead to the group exchanging tapes of their own home recordings before departing their hometown in the early ‘90s.
Doss, Hart and Mangum would all decamp to Athens, Georgia, and form Synthetic Flying Machine, a brash and noisy project that used field recordings and DIY techniques, while Schneider would relocate to Denver, Colorado and form a project of his own in The Apples in Stereo. Having these projects running in tandem with one another on separate sides of the USA, they together decided that the best way to keep connected would be to form the Elephant 6 Recording Company in a collective effort to link the two cities and the music they were making and discovering together.
Tracing the directions that the collective would take after here becomes increasingly difficult, as the founders’ involvement in the separate cities’ scenes would see them rapidly introduce more collaborators into the fold while continuing to appear as parts of each other’s projects. Doss and Hart would separate from Mangum to form The Olivia Tremor Control, releasing two of the strangest records in the collective’s catalogue in Dusk at Cubist Castle and Black Foliage in the late ‘90s and begin to garner mainstream attention, while Mangum’s Neutral Milk Hotel project remains the best-known act to have spawned from the founding members, thanks to their acclaimed concept album In The Aeroplane Over The Sea.
Other acts would soon become of note within Elephant 6, such as Athens-based Of Montreal, an ever-rotating cast of musicians helmed by songwriter Kevin Barnes, who remains one of the few acts from the collective still going today. With 19 studio albums under their belt and having traversed through psychedelic rock, glam, folk and vaudeville, among other genres, their existence has helped keep the legacy of Elephant 6 going today, with celebrated albums such as Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?, and Satanic Panic in the Attic being hailed as two of their crowning achievements.
The Minders may not have enjoyed the same levels of cult success as other members of the group, but their debut album, Hooray For Tuesday, is possibly the truest homage to the ‘60s psychedelia that the collective initially formed over, combining the whimsical and carefree songwriting of bands like The Kinks and The Zombies without once sounding like a pastiche of the British Invasion acts that inspired it.
Despite the varying notoriety of acts within the collective, their importance as a group of like-minded individuals who were passionate about continuing the experimentation of ‘60s psychedelia into the ‘90s and beyond is still admired now and has seen the release of a documentary on the collective’s history as recently as 2022.
Speaking about the film and the 13-year labour of love that went into making it, director Chad Stockfleth said: “The great thing about art is, it outlives you. The magic they’d spent their lives trying to capture, it’s on that tape.” In the case of both Doss and Hart, it has sadly outlived two of the co-founders, with the duo having sadly passed in 2012 and 2024, respectively. The passing of Hart, who had been suffering from multiple sclerosis since 2005, would tragically and unexpectedly come just hours after he had released two new Olivia Tremor Control tracks via Bandcamp, which were due to be a part of the band’s final album that they had worked on prior to Doss’ death and were also released as part of the official Elephant 6 documentary soundtrack.
Fellow co-founder Schneider paid tribute to Hart shortly after his death, saying, “You were so amazing, I can’t even believe you existed. I will miss your love and your humour and your energy and your brilliance forever.” In another eulogy, Andrew Rieger of Elephant 6 group Elf Power would fondly remember the “30 great years of friendship and many amazing musical collaborations” that the two of them shared.
What the various members of Elephant 6 did together and separately was indeed magic. They captured a resurgence of a sound that felt equally as spellbinding 30 years prior. Hopefully, their legacy will continue long into the future or be picked up again by another equally creative group.
