Alan Palomo’s Neon Indian project started almost by accident. But since the release Neon Indian’s widely-acclaimed debut album Psychic Chasms in 2009, Palomo’s music has taken the indie music; and increasingly, the pop music; world by storm with festival dates, high-profile collaborations, and even a special single release with Mountain Dew’s Green Label. Palomo, who was already performing refined electronic pop under the name VEGA, watched his bedroom-based weirdo synth-pop side project grow into a full-fledged touring force, complete with blog buzz and critical accolades.

Neon Indian, along with acts like Memory Tapes and Washed Out, is a flagship name in the recently termed, often-acclaimed, sometimes derided sub-genre of electronic music termed “chillwave” or “glo-fi,” often characterized by relaxed beats, swelling sounds, and heavy effect manipulation. However, to hear Palomo describe it, Neon Indian’s music is far from a hipster trend or a pop-culture novelty. To him, the project represents the fulfillment of his own idiosyncratic, spontaneous, nostalgic, and very personal approach to electronic music.

Neon Indian will perform on Friday, June 11th at Fountain Square as part of Midpoint Music Festival’s Indie Summer Series. He recently agreed to talk to Each Note Secure about the origins of his music and its exploding popularity.

[Each Note Secure] How did the Neon Indian project first start?

[Alan Palomo] It’s actually kind of funny – it all started with the song “Should Have Taken Acid with You.” I had arranged to take some hallucinogens over the holidays with an old friend of mine and unfortunately I was mixing a record in Dallas and was unable to make it down. So as a humorous, sort of tongue-in-cheek apology, I wrote her this song. It was sort of based on mutual influences we had at the time, like when we hung out in high school and would listen to stuff like Ariel Pink.

I just sat on this song for a while, and even tried to re-write it as a VEGA song, but I realized that it wasn’t really fitting [VEGA’s] particular soundscape, and that the incarnation of the song that existed was exactly what it needed to be. I decided to write more songs in that style. “6669” came out and “Deadbeat Summer” came out, and in less than a month I had a whole record.

[ENS] Your music features a lot of sounds similar to classic videogames or old synthesizers. Do you feel a connection to those types of sounds?

[AP] Yeah, I’ve always been incredibly infatuated with it. I had the pleasure of twiddling around with an Oberheim OB-X down south in San Antonio where I grew up, at this place called Crazy Cat’s Music. I pressed down a key and it immediately took me to these individual moments of childhood which I seem to interpret sonically.

It probably also had to do with pop music I grew up listening to around the house. I always thought it was kind of funny that there a lot of these rock bands that always had, like, one synthesizer track. And they’re not electronic musicians, so it would always come out sounding goofy and idiosyncratic. There’s something really special about that… like that Paul McCartney song “Wonderful Christmas Time.” It’s like this thing just wandered into the studio and they were like, “Yeah, fuck it, just track it live and we’ll see what happens.”

I can totally relate to that mentality because that’s how I approach electronic music. For example, my dad is a real, formally trained musician, and has been his entire life. I’ve always been pretty much the opposite, coming at it more passively. My relationship with music has come more from that standpoint of wanting to make weird sounds […] more explorative, just sitting down in the studio and playing whatever weird thing pops in my head. And that’s the criterion for Neon Indian… there are no bad ideas; it’s all just a question of finding the right context.

[ENS] So when you first started playing music, did you start on synthesizers?

[AP] Well, I didn’t actually start playing music until college. I always had an interest in music, but I don’t think it really actualized itself until much later. I grew up around it and absorbed it passively, but my interests were more rooted in film – that’s what I studied in college – and music was just a side curiosity which was funneled specifically through synths. I bought an acoustic guitar in high school like everybody [laughs] and played “Karma Police” at open mic nights. It was an introduction into basic three and four-chord progressions.

But when I got to college, I met people with mutual interests, as far as music was concerned. By then I was already inhaling the entire New Order discography and getting really into early 80’s synth pop and cold wave stuff. And I ultimately wanted to take a stab at it myself.

[ENS] What is your recording process like? Do you start with an idea first, or do you hear a sound and go from there?

[AP] Well, when you work with a grid on a sequencer or a computer program, the music takes on this really weird, circular quality. You start with a loop and it starts repeating and just looping and looping and changes and progresses and strange things happen. I start from there – I just space out on this drum loop for awhile until the ideas start flooding in.

“Should Have Taken Acid With You” was more of a concept, but there are songs like “Ephemeral Artery” that happened by putting something in the wrong channel accidentally and funneling it through all these effects, and next thing you know you’ve written a song in a night or two.

[ENS] Do you try to incorporate your interest and background in film into your live shows with video projections and the like?

[AP] Totally! [The Neon Indian live show] has been a collaboration with my friend Lars Larsen, who builds a lot of modular synths. He’s actually been building a lot of video synthesizers. For a lot of the bigger shows we’ve played, we’ve flown him out to do video projections for us live. It’s a very complimentary piece to the music, because the visuals tend to be along the same line – these weird analogue manipulations of childhood references… or recognizable symbols… or these little moments that are suddenly thrown through this lo-fi psychedelic filter.

[ENS] What’s it been like to get so much attention for Neon Indian so quickly?

[AP] It’s a little surreal. Obviously, it comes with a whole new set of responsibilities. My life has been pretty nuts for the past six months. I sort of feel like I’m just along for the ride and just trying to go about my business as I would have before, at least creatively. I always try to keep sight of the aesthetic and integrity of the project and all that.

Just a little less than a year ago, I was finishing [Psychic Chasms] on the floor of my apartment in Austin. To suddenly be living in New York and getting ready to tour for a festival run… I can’t even really articulate it. It’s just a sensation.

[ENS] With all of Neon Indian’s attention, as well as everything you do for your other project, VEGA, is it hard to find time to balance everything?

[AP] Yeah, it’s a little tough [laughs]. Tour dates keep piling up, and trying to find time to sit down and work in the studio is a little hard. It’s a little weird trying to convince [managers, booking agents, etc.] that, “Oh, you can just have a studio day on a Wednesday, and then you’ll fly out for five days, and then you can have another studio day,” doesn’t really work. I have to explain the concept that just one day in a studio isn’t going to do anything; you have to get yourself in a certain mindset and disappear for a week. It’s a little tough, but I think this summer I’ll have some time to actually sit down and work out the rough sketches for the next album, and then have a solid two or three months to record everything and mix it.

[ENS] Do you foresee any stylistic shifts with these new recordings?

[AP] I could try to describe it to you, but it would really come out as a bunch of idiotic adjectives. Like, “The next album will be spacier!” [laughs] I definitely have some pretty finite ideas of what I want to do on the next record, and there will definitely be a stylistic shift. There are some other genres I want to be able to tap into, but that’s all pretty far off. I have an idea here and there that just sort of randomly pops out if I have time to record, but the next actual Neon Indian record will be a whole new writing process.

Neon Indian – Deadbeat Summer

-interview by John Crowell. Follow John on twitter @terriblesounds

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