Alan Palomo won't reveal what synthesizer he relied on for much of his new album, World of Hassle, except to say it's a Casio he bought for $500. He's afraid mentioning the model might popularize it and make it shoot up in price, as has already happened for so many of these treasured machines from the 1970s and '80s.
"Boomers had their Harleys and millennials have their '80s nostalgia," he says. Palomo, who is himself a millennial, shares this passion – and he reminisces about the 1981 Roland Jupiter-8 he used to own, which he calls the "holy grail" of synthesizers. "Like an idiot, I sold it," he says. "I tried to buy one again during the pandemic. They shot up to, like, $37,000."
