This track started with evolving synth drone sound from my op1. I was working on another track for the first few days but after making this drone I decided to scrap the rest and just use the drone sound as a basis of the rest of the track.

The one problem was that the drone sound slowly drifts around the 80bpm tempo mark without sticking to a fixed tempo for more than a couple of bars. I tried to make it work in a fixed tempo but it lost its key element of being unnerving and grabbing your attention. Which I believe is partly down to the drifting nature of the sound.
Deciding to ignore the tempo entirely and use the synth as my reference greatly affected the rest of the track as It meant I couldn’t use midi fixed to a grid for any part of the track and everything would have to be played by hand and recorded into the track.

Because everything had to be recorded live I decided to use real instruments instead of samples as much as possible and to keep the dark and rough and ready approach I used single takes of each instrument.

I recorded each instrument several times and picked the take that worked the best, the only exception being the drums which were samples played live from NI Maschine: