Rings Around The World - Origins and Recording

Origins and Recording

Rings Around the World was the Super Furry Animals' first album for Epic Records following the demise, in 1999, of their previous label Creation and the success of 2000's Mwng, which was issued on the band's own label, Placid Casual. Singer Gruff Rhys has stated that the band aimed to make a "laid back and sort of wiped clean" record with Rings.... In a 2008 interview with Uncut Rhys described the album as "a very ambitious project" stating that "We were trying to make a blockbuster album that was going to be like The Eagles ... We were trying to make utopian pop music that had pretensions of being progressive and exciting." Rings... was originally going to be called Text Messaging is Destroying the Pub Quiz as We Know It and released as a double album containing 75–90 minutes of material with Rhys stating that he was "into the excess of it, that was the whole point". The group eventually decided against the idea but, drawn by the technical capabilities of the format and the desire to do something that had never been done before, produced a DVD version of Rings..., making it the first album to be simultaneously released on CD and DVD. The DVD features a surround sound mix alongside music videos and remixes and was made possible only by the financial backing of Epic.

Recording sessions began in April 2000 at Monnow Valley Studios in Rockfield, Monmouthshire, Wales with co-producer Chris Shaw and engineer Eric Tew. The band moved to Bearsville Studios, New York before returning to Monnow Valley some months later where recording was completed in September 2000. Bearsville was chosen because of its drum and live rooms, which the band felt were desirable as they were using more microphones to capture audio for the surround sound mix included on the DVD version of the album than they would normally when simply recording in stereo. The group were mindful of the capabilities of surround sound and recorded sub-bass on tracks such as " Touch Sensitive" and "Juxtapozed with U", which could only be heard through a low-frequency subwoofer channel in the surround mix. The band recorded onto two-inch analogue tape until they had a take they were happy with, then transferred the results to Pro Tools where individual songs were edited and overdubs were added. According to Keyboardist Cian Ciaran this meant the band could "edit some beats very precisely ... like the gated kicks at the end of the track "Sidewalk Serfer Girl"". Once they were happy with a song the group then transferred it back to tape before mixing took place as they liked the "tape sound".

Rhys wrote many of the tracks on the album on acoustic guitar and piano and brought them to the band either as fully formed songs or as ideas which the group would then jam out. Ciaran wrote the songs " Touch Sensitive" and "Miniature" and the intro and outro of "Run! Christian, Run!". A jam between Cian 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 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 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 song "Presidential Suite". The Super Furry Animals had met Cale in Cardiff when they acted as his backing band for a song which appeared on the film Beautiful Mistake. They originally asked him to arrange strings for "Presidential Suite" but Cale turned them down reasoning that he would simply do what the band do: hum a melody to someone who could write the music down for him.