Michael A. Muller - Elyria Sound

* Second release on OJAS x Vinyl Factory label
* 33rpm cut on 180g virgin black vinyl
* Limited edition of 500 copies worldwide 
* Hand numbered
* Full colour, uncoated sleeve
* Release date 8th May 2026

The second release from Ojas Music, Elyria Sound is a solo guitar album from Michael A. Muller, recorded to analogue tape during a winter storm in Brooklyn in January 2026.

Where Muller's previous work operated in darker, atmospheric territories, and 2024's Mirror Music (Deutsche Grammophon) wove together 11 collaborators, Elyria Sound strips everything back to a single voice: one instrument, one room, one take. Each piece was captured live in single passes to a one-inch tape machine, the most direct path from fingertip to magnetic oxide.

The album title traces to 2018, when Muller began writing solo music while housesitting for a friend in Elyria Canyon in the East Los Angeles hills. The address became the name of his studio, and when he moved to LA shortly after, it became a way of life for the next six years. Elyria Sound is an intimate homage to his sensorial world of that time: the quality of light through a kitchen window. The lull of helicopters and sirens, the blurred glimmer of city lights stretching to the night horizon. Gravel, dust, lizards, birds. Clacking bamboo, white rose, jade, fig, and lemon. A dwelling. A resting place. The comfort of an exhale, and the looming awareness that nothing stays.

To create the record, Muller developed entirely new guitar tunings, forcing himself to relearn the instrument's language from scratch. The result moves between lullaby and lament: spare, cyclical compositions where motifs recur at differing angles and tempos, variations on a central thread. One piece, "Arundel," pays tribute to David Pajo (Papa M, Slint, Tortoise), a nod to the lineage of guitar music that values texture and patience over drama.

The cover artwork by Dennis Foster serves as a visual counterbalance to the music's intended simplicity.

A premiere of Elyria Sound will be presented as a listening event via 1/4” master tape on May 9, 2026, at 180 Studios in London with a fifteen concert tour throughout Europe to follow. michael-muller.com

Analogue Recording & Mixing by Jonathan Low—Brooklyn NY
Analogue mastering & all-tube lacquer cut by Frederic Stader—Köln DE
Plated & pressed on the EMI1400 at The Vinyl Factory—Hayes UK

Tracklist:

Side A
Lacuna
Nocturne For Leigh
Blue Hour
Loom
Aubade

Side B
This Is The Water And This Is The Well
Caché
Half-Light
Tasogare
Ohne
Arundel