Information/Write-up
Midnite News is the debut recording of Tona Walt Ohama, issued in 1982 in an edition of just 100 hand-assembled cassettes from the basement studio beneath his family’s potato farm in Rainier, Alberta. Built from analogue synthesizers, tape loops, early drum machines, and stray signals pulled from late-night radio and television, the cassette introduced the stark, melodic, and deeply personal electronic world he had been shaping in rural isolation.
Songs such as “My Time,” “Part in Peace,” “Midnite News,” and “Of Whales” appear here in their earliest forms, already showing his instinct for drifting melody wrapped in minimal, atmospheric arrangements. The standout “Mushin No Shin” remains one of his most striking early works — a pulsing sequencer piece anchored by a one-take, backwards-echo piano solo that could never be replicated.
Originally traded through campus stations and underground tape networks, Midnite News quickly developed a cult reputation. Today, with an original-issue valuation of $1,300, it stands as one of the most valuable Canadian cassettes ever documented, ranking alongside Buck 65’s Year Zero and Grimes’ Geidi Primes in the top tier of Canadian cassette rarities.
A foundational document of early Canadian electronic music, Midnite News captures Ohama at the beginning — solitary, inventive, and distinct.
“The sound of that piano solo, I could never do it again. It’s done in real time with cut-up tapes playing backwards through an echo machine and, at the end of the solo, there’s an echo that’s perfectly timed. I could never do that again in 100 years with that equipment. It was one take that worked. I didn’t have a sequencer. The drum machine had no ability to sync up to a synthesizer at that time. Those notes were played at half that speed then sped up.”— Ohama
-Robert Williston
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