the Kangaroo benefited from other key contributors, primarily lead singer and bass guitarist Steve Griffith from Vector. According to Hindalong, Griffith was "a great engineer, who engineered the All Fall Down record for the 77’s up in Sacramento. We were such a fan of that album, for a period of a few weeks, we brought Steve down to work with us." Griffith would perform a variety of duties, including bass guitar, additional production and background vocals. Mark Heard, who had helped produce the re-recorded version of "A Million Years," also returned to assist with engineering, recording and background vocals. One challenge during the recording process was capturing the work of saxophone and Lyricon player Dan Michaels, who — in contrast to his more animated stage presence — would tend to freeze up under studio pressure. As a result, Daugherty and Hindalong asked Michaels to "just play along with a track" as a "rehearsal," so they could secretly record his performance; most of Michaels' contributions on Chase the Kangaroo were captured this way. Composition Music The Choir explored far more atmospheric and ambient textures on Chase the Kangaroo with "deep rhythms, layered guitars, [and] haunting vocals." Daugherty experimented extensively with multiple guitars and effects, and Hindalong implemented drum programming along with a variety of analog drum setups, all of which were present on the album’s thematic centerpiece, "Sad Face." To create that song, the band started jamming together, and then "the whole thing formed nearly in one sound check," according to bass guitarist Tim Chandler. Daugherty then used a Korg SDD 3000 Delay for its "weird, harmonic modulation feature," which Hindalong claimed was "one of my favorite guitar things Derri's ever done." Hindalong used an E-mu SP-12 for the drum programming, which included sampling his own kick and snare drum work, and it was Eugene who insisted the drum machine end the song with no musical accompaniment before transitioning into the ambient instrumental coda. Finally, Michaels used a Yamaha version of a Lyricon run through an Oberheim extension module for a more digital-sounding musical contribution. In addition to "Sad Face," Daugherty said that "one of the [proudest] things of ours that I've ever done" is the instrumental break for "Clouds," which was created using an initial recording on magnetic tape, then flipped backwards to record additional instrumentation with the assistance of DAT technology. "[Back] then, it was not easy to do,"