The Non has been causing quite a stir lately with all the hype for their new album Tadaima. I’m really diggin’ the new album art and the general direction these guys are going. Their mathy instrumentals are a welcomed sound in the local scene. Plus, it’s always nice to see something good come out of Edmond. You can download their debut album Paper City for free on their website for a limited time, and don’t forget to check out their two night album release party this weekend.

Where are you from?
Wil – I’m from Edmond, Oklahoma.
Tom – Oklahoma City, born and raised.

What do you do?
Wil – I’m a student at Oklahoma Christian but spend my time daydreaming about music.
Tom – Lots of music things and lots of airplane things. I love playing in the band and working on everything that entails, I love everything about it. I listen to huge amounts of music all the time, always finding new tunes from the past and present. I really can’t get away from it and would never want to. A life entails more then music, though. I’m a student at the University of Oklahoma and spend a good amount of my weeks flying airplanes out of Norman as a professional pilot major.

Who or what do you use for inspiration?
Wil – I guess I read a lot of literature, which always makes me question all of my convictions on everything. I think being unsettled as a person keeps me moving, and as long as I don’t get stuck in my thoughts, I think I’ll always be able to find inspiration.
Tom – Every day I wake up is one for inspiration—everything influences us, musically or otherwise. From the coffee in the morning to texture of your mattress at night, it can make you think or feel a certain way and that can have an impact on whatever it is you do. My biggest sources of inspiration are my mood and thoughts at any given moment. They can make you play a certain way and think about the music you’re making from completely different angles within a matter of minutes. It’s amazing. Of course I have to mention music as an inspiration; something is constantly spinning wherever I am and I am hugely impacted as a musician by what I listen to and think is cool.

What artists do you respect right now?
Wil – In Norman/Oklahoma City, I am obviously a huge fan of Evangelicals and Sethy McCarroll, both in Gentle Ghost and as a visual artist. I will always love Kunek/Other Lives/whatever the band featuring Jesse Tabish and his talented band mates.
Tom – My big time all stars are John Frusciante, Weather Report, Modest Mouse, Jethro Tull, Yes, The Mars Volta, Led Zeppelin, Bela Fleck & the Flecktones, and Charles Mingus, among others.

What are you sick of?
Wil – Christmas music. It’s enough to drive me out of Starbucks for a month, which is actually a good thing anyway. So that too, I’m sick of Starbucks and all the money I wish I never spent there.
Tom – Petty problems being abundantly voiced by those feeling the need to do so.

What music are you listening to recently?
Wil – I feel fairly unoriginal for loving Animal Collective’s “Fall Be Kind” but it really is pretty amazing. I fell asleep to it a few days ago and I swear I had visions of a tight-rope walker (Bleed), flashing neon shapes (On a Highway), and strange pyramid tunnels (I Think I Can). Really great. Also, I am obsessed with Kaki King’s “…Until We Felt Red.” She’s brilliant. Her chord progressions are impossible and she’s able to make guitar sounds that are unique in a musical world of constant reference to other bands.
Tom – I just got bought two Midlake records the other day and that’s what I’m binging on at the moment. They’re an astonishing band from Denton, if anyone doesn’t know who they are. I had never heard them before but now I know what I was missing. The top five CDs sitting in the stack in front of me are by The Sugarcubes, The Clash, Dan Deacon, Return to Forever, and Tortoise.

What is your first creative memory?
Wil – I’ve been drawing since forever. In elementary school, I used to draw these extremely elaborate drawings of Star Wars-esque soldiers or medieval knights and whatnot. For class in second grade, my friends and I drew this super-bloody mural of a medieval-era siege, complete with people cutting off heads and getting boiling liquid poured on them. I’ve always wondered what my teachers thought of stuff like that, it was pretty morbid. But awesome.
Tom – The farthest back I can recall is a family road-trip where, for some reason, I had a really old child’s keyboard, the kind where you can hit only one key at once. I figured out how to play that thing on the drive and had a great time. This would have been in the mid-nineties.

What is your favorite food/drank spot in Norman?
Wil – It’s really hard for me not to pick anything other than The Library. It’s great when it’s warm enough to sit outside there, and the Sunday $5 pizza is just about impossible to beat. The atmosphere’s a little irreverent and you always overhear some way-out-there conversations by what seem to be brain-fried physics professors or something and that’s always great for a little while.
Tom – Lot’s to choose from! If I had to pick, I would say I either The Greek House or Midway.

Anything else?
Wil – Thanks!
Tom – Check out our new website and our new album, Tadaima!

Video by Nathan Poppe.