In “Sleep Drifter,” Stu sings about being sleepy while touring but finding this state of hypnagogia pleasant as it allows him to imagine he’s next to his partner. Starting with a descending microtonal riff, we’re greeted with a mellow but steady verse with highlighted harmonica, intricate guitar riffs, and a driving rhythm. The song largely sticks within this krautrock-inspired rhythm but adds a long outro where the band is allowed space to improvise. “Sleep Drifter” captures that transitional space between being awake and being asleep, though in a live setting the band transformed the track into a high energy jam with whole new sections of improv.
Some have theorized that “Sleep Drifter” was based on the song “Kara Toprak” by Turkish ashik Veysel Şatıroğlu, though this has not been confirmed by the band. That said, Stu originally intended for Flying Microtonal Banana to be a Turkish folk album based around bağlama, though this proved to be too difficult for the band. Two demos for “Sleep Drifter” have been released. The first is on Demos Vol. 3: Music To Eat Pond Scum To. Coming in at two minutes and eighteen seconds in length, this barebones version skips the intro and outro and extends the verses. The song is played faster than the final version, with only guitar and drums present. The second demo was put on Demos Vol. 4: Music To Die To and features a full band lineup and a much longer runtime. This track features two different pieces of the song. The first part is played slower than the first demo, with a pace and structure generally closer to the Flying Microtonal Banana rendition. The second part is a jam reminiscent of the outro from the studio version. Between their performances they talk about how to start the takes and how the song will fade into its outro. “Sleep Drifter” was played by Ambrose (harmonica), Cavs (drums/bongos), Cook (bass), Joey (guitar) and Stu (guitar/vocals) and was released as a single on January 17th, 2017. This makes it the first song released that year. In February a sampler for the label Remote Control featured a radio edit of the song that hasn’t been made available elsewhere. The song saw a release on Flying Microtonal Banana on February 24th, 2017.
The first known performance of “Sleep Drifter” happened on 2017-01-21 at The Meadow in Singapore. Throughout the year the song remained in their lineup but featured a different composition than the studio version. Rather than starting with the descending riff, the band improvised on different parts of the songs for about two and a half minutes before going into the song proper before gradually slowing to a crawl at the song’s ending. These versions were significantly longer, usually passing the five-minute mark. The band would continue to play this version throughout the following year. A Banana-less performance of “Sleep Drifter” from 2018-08-05 was featured in the video ПАДАЮЩИЙ СНЕГ. Live versions of the song from that year (such as 2018-06-20) also inspired the K.G. track “Honey.” In 2019 the band simplified the track and played it close to the studio version, though they cut the outro entirely. While the song was not played in 2020, it returned for the band’s microtonal shows in 2021. Here the song was paired with “Honey” for a medley of “Sleep Drifter” > “Honey.” The band would continue to play this in the following years, though they would also change it up with some shows using the song in conjunction with other tracks like “Billabong Valley” (see 2022-08-05). Other times, “Sleep Drifter” was played on its own (see 2022-06-06). As the band began to jam more and more past 2022, the song was extended with some performances, such as 2023-08-14 reaching nearly ten minutes in length.