and guitarist Huw Bunford resulted in Rings Around the World's opening track "Alternate Route to Vulcan Street". The pair looped a sample of drummer Dafydd Ieuan playing the bass drum and snare and recorded themselves playing along on piano and guitar into a sampler. They then "chopped the playing up a bit" and filtered the drums and guitar to "give them more movement". Finally Rhys wrote lyrics and a string arrangement was added by Sean O'Hagan. Cian also contributed the second part of the song "No Sympathy", sampling the "mellow acoustic guitars" from the first half to create a techno "climactic ending". Sessions for Rings Around the World saw the band concentrating on arrangements, particularly their vocal harmonies. On previous albums individual members of the group would "keep singing until [they] came up with harmonies that worked" but, encouraged by co-producer Chris Shaw, for Rings... the band took the time to work out harmonies in advance. The group used piano, keyboards or "whatever was available" to give themselves a starting note before the five band members and staff at the recording studio began trying ideas out. Occasionally Auto-Tune was used to "re-pitch existing lines to see if different versions of them would counterpoint correctly", with the band then learning the new vocal lines and recording them as they did not want to use Auto-Tune on the finished album. Paul McCartney is credited as providing "celery and carrot" on the track "Receptacle for the Respectable". McCartney is alleged to have performed a similar role over thirty years earlier, chewing celery to form the percussion track of The Beach Boys song "Vegetables" from the album Smiley Smile. The Super Furry Animals had met the ex-Beatle at the NME Awards when a drunk Ciaran persuaded him to let them remix some Beatles material, resulting in 2000's Liverpool Sound Collage album. The band asked him to "return the favour" and appear on Rings Around the World, recording his part over the phone. Huw Bunford has said of McCartney's contribution: "He took it with good nature. You kind of see how far you can go sometimes ... we figured we already had a bass and singers so we really didn't need any more musicians. So we figured he could crunch vegetables". Former Velvet Underground member John Cale, a "sort of childhood hero" of Rhys's, also makes an appearance on the album, playing piano on the