OJAS Music label launches with VF vinyl release of Michael A. Muller & Otto A. Totland

Unna is the first record from OJAS Music.

OJAS Music, a new imprint from the New York-based hi-fi and design company OJAS, has partnered with The Vinyl Factory for a worldwide run of its first vinyl pressing.

The inaugural release is Unna, a collaborative EP from recording artist Michael A. Muller and Norwegian composer Otto A. Totland, available now as a limited edition vinyl pressing of 500 hand-numbered copies.

Muller, who co-founded the label alongside OJAS creator Devon Turnbull, has spent over two decades working across multiple roles in music — as co-founder of Balmorhea, as a solo artist whose early catalogue was released on Deutsche Grammophon, and as a film composer. His collaborations include work with Hania Rani, Alva Noto, Víkingur Ólafsson, The Album Leaf and Douglas McCombs of Tortoise.

Totland is one half of experimental ambient duo Deaf Center, whose releases on Type Records and Sonic Pieces helped shape a generation of minimalist music. His solo piano trilogy, produced by Nils Frahm, received wide acclaim. Unna marks his first solo output since Exin on Leiter.

The project grew out of a friendship spanning fifteen years and a shared frustration with the state of contemporary listening. "It's becoming harder and harder to get people to really listen," Muller says. "Everyone's busy, everyone's distracted. The idea of going to a record shop, finding something, sitting down and doing nothing but listening — that's rare now."

Rather than orienting the label around streaming metrics or genre, Muller and Turnbull have built OJAS Music around the physical experience of listening itself, drawing on Turnbull's work designing listening environments — including his Listening Room installation with The Vinyl Factory at 180 Studios in London — and Muller's long history as a recording artist and label operator.

Unna — Norwegian for "away" — operates as a double entendre, gesturing both to the physical distance between the two artists and to the inward pull of creative flow, where time recedes and attention deepens. The music pairs Totland's close-miked, delicate piano with Muller's contributions on double bass, glockenspiel, Mellotron and Rhodes. Sparse piano lines hang suspended in long decays, with minimal harmonic movement and space playing an active role throughout.

The collaboration began in 2023 with material moving informally between Norway and Los Angeles. "After about a year and a half, we had eight pieces," Muller explains. "We chose five that felt cohesive." The result is music made without pressure or deadlines. "There was no endpoint," he says. "It was just the joy of making something."

The production chain reflects the label's ethos. Mastering and all-tube lacquer cutting were handled by Frederic Stader in Cologne, with the vinyl plated and pressed on the EMI1400 at The Vinyl Factory in Hayes.

The release is a 45rpm cut on 180g virgin black vinyl with a full-colour uncoated sleeve. Alongside vinyl, Unna is available on CD, cassette and made-to-order reel-to-reel tape transferred directly from the master.

A premiere of Unna will be presented in a listening event via 1/4” 2-track tape and vinyl on March 19, 2026, at the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City.

Order a copy now.

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