Synthi AKS
Like the Moog IIP and the Arp 2600, the Synthi AKS is a 50-year old design that has never fallen out of use by musicians. Like those instruments, it's also modular in nature, requiring connections to be made between its modules to create sounds; uniquely, it uses small conducting pins to make these connections, lending itself to experimental synthesis where elements like oscillators can be recursively connected to themselves to create otherworldly sounds. Also uniquely, it contains a sequencer that lets up to 256 notes be recorded, played back and transposed. Created partly as a tool to help teach electronic music, its compact size gives little indication of the power of its sound, and it has one of the most aggressive filters on any synth, vintage or modern. This one has been reconditioned by Constantin Papageorgiadis, the leading expert on EMS gear in Europe, to make its oscillators temperature stable and to add features such as Sample & Hold and oscillator sync.
Classic: The burbling ostinato that runs through Pink Floyd's On The Run, from Dark Side of the Moon, is classic Synthi, and typical of the way the limitation of its sequencer — specifically, the fact that it will not record what you play with any degree of fidelity — becomes one of its characteristic strengths. Miquette Giraudy also used one extensively — along with an Arp 2600 — as part of her work with prog rock band Gong in the 70s.
Contemporary: Alessandro Cortini has made a body of work of astonishing breadth and depth using mainly two families of instruments — Buchlas and Synthis. Forse, from 2013, uses just the Buchla Music Easel, while Avanti, from 2017, was the first in a series of works recorded using just a Synthi AKS. Although Avanti is nostalgic in tone, there's very little nostalgia about the gigantic sound Cortini creates from running his Synthi through a guitar amp. Irish producer Donnacha Costello also used the Synthi exclusively for both 2016's Mouvements and 2018's Dreamy Death.
Club: Whether LCD Soundsystem's Tonite is a club track depends on what types of clubs you go to, but it's danceable, jampacked full of vintage synths, and like a lot of the tracks on the band's reunion album American Dream, features the EMS.