t 3
NEWS photo Mike Waketiald

DARYL BENNETT (left), Jim Guitridge and Erika Florian of Ferocious Fish sound design team are an
unassuming bunch. Their clientele, however, includes the iikes of Warner Brothers, PBS, Ottawa's
Museum of Nature, BCTV and the Knowledge Network.

A close encounter with W. Van’s Ferocious Fish

HE SOUND design team of fim Guttridge, Dary!
Bennett and Erika Florian — known collectively as
Ferocious Fish — was, appropriately enough, born in

troubled waters.

In keeping with the fishy theme,
Guttridge and Bennett recount
their beginnings as we sit in the
trendy Beatty Street Barracuda
Cafe, sipping cappuccino from
fish-shaped cups and saucers:

“We were together on a cruise
ship that sank,’’ Bennett says
almost maiter-of-factly, then
breaks into laughter.

“Jim got off the day before the
boat sank but | was one of the last
ones to get off. We sank on a dock
near Campbell River.”

Fortunately, it wasn’t a sign of
things to come. The pair, along
with Florian, Guttridge’s wife,
garnered their first Grammy
nomination this year for their work
on U.S, rock band Gwar's latest
video.

The Fish wrote the score and
created sound for Falice in
Wonderland, a satirical comment
on American culture based on the
arrest of one of the band members
during a stage performance in
Georgia. His crime? Groping a
large cuttlefish between his legs.

One would expect the trio to be
overjoyed with the recognition —
after all, they‘re relatively small
minnows in the big pond of sound
design — a term Bennett defines
as taking a sound and digitally

* stretching it until it becomes
unrecognizable. And they were up
against acts like Annie Lennox and
M.C. Hammer.

Guttridge and Bennett, however,
don't share the same enthusiasm.

“We laughed and laughed.
Especially when you consider our
vocals were on it, says Guttridge.

“Gwar are really fun guys and
they're very smart,” observes
Bennett. ‘‘They allowed us to put
our complete personalities into the
video, We added the sound of bat
wings and skateboards and made.
it quite surreal. And we added a
tot of humor — you could say we
did all the non-disgusting stuff. But
Annie Lennox’ video looked a Jot
better.” He pauses for a moment
and adds: ‘It’s probably best we
didn’t win because then we'd be
known for it.”

Obscurity is the least of the
team’s challenges. Try being given
only one week to bang out a

Evelyn Jacob
SPOTLIGHT FEATURE

polished video, or, God forbid,
having your well-tuned sound
yoice-over'd.

“it's tough to write music for
emotions. How do you do five
minutes for a dying whale?”’ says
Bennett.

Ferocious Fish didn’t start out

quite so ferocious. Theirs were
humble beginnings, working from
Guttridge’s parents’ converted
garage in West Vancouver.

A Cap College commercial
music grad who studied in New
York with keyboardist Kenny
Kirkland (their lessons ended
when Kirkland joined Sting’s
band), Guttridge, 29, and Florian,
31, a composer for dance and
classical music, founded the Fero-
cious Fish in 1988. Bennett, 31, a
freelance percussionist who has
played with David Foster, Kenny
Loggins and Bryan Adams, came
on board one year later.

The ichthyological inspiration for
the group’s name, I’m told, was
inspired by the team’s pet fish — a
teeny-weeny guppy that ended up
devouring a much larger co-
habitor, fin by fin. ““We thought
it was a stupid name and that
peuple would remember it,’

See Groun page 31

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