HWYUIOD - The Window
(OMNISON11, PRPO2230 / July 2025)


27€ - 300 copies (SOLD OUT)

"HWYUIOD?! Here's where you understand it's only dreaming. The band’s declaration, rather a mantra, like a philosophical postulate, proves to be the best definition of this elegant trio. The gang's first discographic incarnation blended the desert and the electricity, recorded on a magic carpet, with promises of sequels, of evasion we should say. It's even better this time, as the language spoken here grows deeper with each live. The permanent mutation of HWYUIOD's sound reflects the human triangle at work. Ears fed on electronic hypnosis records, shoegaze lava flows, free music or anything solid that the avant-garde can offer, the amalgam is inevitably fruitful in dementia. Alan Briand (Shelter), Tom Val (Orion) and Thomas Riguelle seize upon an idiom of the edges, where slacker rock and slow-core invite themselves into the lore. Scarred ambient is always present, but beyond the magnificent kraut-racket, the impression of hearing a Turkish version of Fugazi imposes itself, with the ghost of Don Cherry not far away, laying his hand on the frail shoulders of our heroes in the making. An obvious synthesis of an era, a symptom of a time when all kinds of exciting music coagulate, HWYUIOD stuns a little more with panache. Distorted voices, celestial swirls, we dive right back in. We think of the great ones… The spirit is perched on the roof of the Fondation Maeght, not far from La Monte Young considering a collaborating with Neu! on an album to be released on Sub Pop. Today it's like that, but tomorrow it'll be even more puzzling. Take the train, we don't know where we're going, but the joy will remain." (Maximilien Douche / Oedipe Purple)

A co-production with Protopost
Voice, flute, tape, fx and drone synth : Tom Val
Bass, synth, electric piano, drums : Alan Briand
Guitar, drums, percussions : Thomas Riguelle
Artwork by Thomas Riguelle, design & lettering by Alan Briand
Liner notes by Maximilien Douche
Recorded between London and Paris
Overdub, mix and mastering at Studio 121

"Just when you thought it couldn’t get any better! Back last year Parisian underbelly mainstays Shelter & Orion combined on Here’s Where You Understand It’s Only Dreaming on undoubtedly one of the annual highlights.  Now growing in confidence, adding Thomas Riguelle, adopting the HWYUIOD pseudonym and turning their motorik gaze inwards, the trio have really touched upon something special that even the most vacant DIY music appreciator would struggle to ignore.  It’s really the sound we’ve been waiting for.  The trio seem to have smelted down disparate threads of their record collections - golden era Kranky, Don Cherry, Crescent, contemporary giants Tanz Mein Herz, Slint, Duster… THE LIST GOES ON - creating a glorious grey area between post-rock, ambient, new-age, slow-core and improvisational idioms.  Oscillating between moments of stoned, introverted seance and fuzz-drenched death-trudge the group keep everything slack, sleep-deprived and pitched down to a slurry.  Recycling and paying homage to the past whilst creating a new voice surely remains the perpetual holy grail of contemporary music, we’re struggling to think of anyone doing it better than this lot right now.  A label and crew that can’t miss - more please!!!!" (All Night Flight)

"New psychoactive murmurings/eruptions/ecstatic epiphanies from great avant rock French outpost, Les Disques Omnison. This is the first recorded outing for the inscrutably named HWYUIOD, a free-minded, post-rock adjacent, krautrock informed trio that features label boss Tom Val and label mate Alain Briand of Shelter amongst its ranks. Knowledge of previous work by those involved isn't exactly unhelpful, but neither does it give you all the coordinates necessary to plot exactly where this new unit are headed. Which, depending on your perspective, is either right into the mind's eye or straight into the heart of the sun. The press release cites Sub Pop, Fugazi and Neu, though if those are the proposed touchstones, they really only express themselves in highly abstracted ways. If there are any US-Germany relations being explored here, then it's Tony Conrad's collaboration with Faust on the elementally infinite Outside the Dream Syndicate that most obviously comes to mind, chiming, drone-oriented screes with at least one eye on the Eternal. Still, there's something obviously unconventional and wilfully quixotic that separates The Window from any like-for-like comparison, the incorporation of various aspects of psychedelia, post-industrial ambience and the deconstructive tendencies of post-rock amassed in a way that might recall the magpie experimentation of Tomaga or the stoned wanderings of Sun Araw without ever really sounding anything like those two acts. There's an obvious conclusion to be drawn from that - whatever it is these guys out there at Les Disques Omnison are seeking, it's not terrafirma. And it's in their purposeful unmooring that HWYUIOD find their inspiration." (World Of Echo)

"Big one! Les Disques Omnison goes post-rock, with a new record that recalls early Kranky (Labradford, Stars of the Lid,…), Flying Nun Records, and turn-of-the-century slowcore. The trio - composed of Orion, Shelter and Thomas Riguelle - offers a follow-up to Shelter & Orion’s 2024 kraut odyssey “Here’s Where You Understand It’s Only Dreaming” - adding fuzz to their guitars and pitching down their groove, under the influence of Duster and Codeine. After a 5 min-long pedal-heavy mist of guitars and unidentified sound sources, HWYUIOD's music gets on the track of a slow rolling drum beat, in which one can find echoes of  Tanz Mein Herz's endless live jams. "High Noon" is one of these songs that abolish duration (or at least wildly dilate time), beginings and ends, like those trains that crosses the US, on which people hop on and off in New Hollywood cinema, Boxcar Bertha and Days of Heaven. Rather than golden fields and Midwest ennui,  "Phantom Cab" - the other drum-driven track on the record - evokes old Europe's motorik beats, the krautrock drums of Jaki Liebzeit: damp cobblestone streets, sullen faces and a sense of immediate danger. Oscillating between these two poles, the music the trio puts on this record is deterritorialized, free-floating in a world of blurred references and an ocean of highly processed sounds. Just like the aforementioned releases from the early days of Kranky, The Window, is not exactly ambient, nor rock or experimental electronic music, it pervades a grey zone, somewhere vaguely at the intersection of these genres. Grey music nonetheless vibrant and eerily seductive. Another highly recommended releases from the Parisian underground!" (PAM / Office PSR)