Neon Indian & Neon Indian – VEGA INTL. Night School

"I tend to not be as much of a purist about using hardware over plug-ins and instead try to combine the best of both worlds. VSTs that attempt to mimic the personality of an old synth can seem kind of beside the point when there’s a ton of plug-ins out there that do really cool stuff that you can’t find in the old garb.

When I work from home, it's exclusively on Ableton, and I do one instrument at a time on my Apollo 8. There’s a rotating cast of synths I take out of storage to use on specific projects. After a few years of collecting, I realized I worked better with limitations. Paring it down to only a few instruments per record makes you develop a better relationship with what’s actually there, and forces you to get the most of out it. For a long while it was my Memorymoog, Minimoog, and Korg PS-3100. Combined, they comprised about three quarters of everything you hear on Vega Intl. Night School. I’m currently hashing out the new rig for what I’m working on next."

On Night School, he credits a Korg PS-3100 (which appears on the album cover), an Emulator II, and a finicky MemoryMoog for helping him capture many of the sounds that appear on the record.

On Night School, he credits a Korg PS-3100 (which appears on the album cover), an Emulator II, and a finicky MemoryMoog for helping him capture many of the sounds that appear on the record.

In a 2022 interview on Synth History, Alan Palomo, known as Neon Indian, is shown in photos taken by Ambar Navarro, including one of the Octave Plateau Voyetra Eight. He is asked about the Voyetra in this excerpt of the interview:

Synth History: I saw that you have a Voyetra. Did you know that New Order used to tour with a rack containing four of them!? Having said that, how do you decide which gear to take on the road? Do you take whatever you use on your songs, or downsize, and are there certain ones you leave home for safety?

Alan Palomo: I do! The whole reason I got one was because I saw it in the Jonathan Demme directed video for Perfect Kiss in high school. I thought to myself, “What is that thing?!”. Sure enough when making the second record I got one of those and an Emulator II in an act of utter New Order fandom. The sad part is that a lot of the more power synths I use on the record rarely travel with me. The risk of damage or failure is too high. One of the few vintage pieces I travel with these days is the Korg MS-20 'cause that thing is built like a tank. On the last record I wound up recording keyboard overlays with the more exotic gear and played it on MIDI keys out of Ableton.