With the green-light to make a new album, Enya recorded "Watermark" from June 1987 to April 1988. It was initially recorded in demo form at Aigle Studio, a 16-track facility located in the basement of the Ryans' home, then located in Artane, a northern suburb of Dublin. Nicky operated a Fostex E16 tape machine with KEF and Yamaha NS-10M speakers for monitoring, two Alesis MIDIverb II models, an ATC Q1 for reverb, and a Roland SDE-1000 Digital Delay for delay. He made a conscious effort not to incorporate audio compression as he wished to make the music sound satisfactory "at the recording end". Enya wrote and recorded the album without the use of a click track to retain a more natural feel to the music. Enya played a variety of keyboards and synthesisers, including the Yamaha KX88 master keyboard, Yamaha TX802, Oberheim Matrix-6R, Akai S900, Roland D-50, Juno-60 and PPG Wave. The Juno-60 was a particular favourite of hers. Prior to recording the album, she had intended to replace its parts with better sounds but could not find better substitutes, so they were left in.