Career
At the ARIA Music Awards McKellar has received nine nominations in the categories of either Producer of the Year or Engineer of the Year. These include You Am I"s "Good Mornin"", "Tuesday" and Spiderbait"s Ivy and the Big Apples (1997, engineer), The Cruel Sea"s "Hard Times" (1998, producer), Spiderbait"s Grand Slam (1999, engineer, producer), Grinspoon"s New Detention (2002, engineer, producer), Sunk Loto"s Between Birth and Death (2004, producer), and Something with Numbers" Perfect Distraction (2007, producer). In the late 1970s Philosophy McKellar worked at the Australian Broadcasting Commission (later renamed as Australian Broadcasting Corporation).
In 1978 a fellow worker, Steve Adam, invited him to join an experimental music outfit, the Informatics, alongside Ramesh Ayar, Valek Sadovchikoff and Michael Trudgeon.
Trudgeon explained their stance "We were driven by a love of the possibilities of what synthesizers and sequencers could do. Quite often the songs were shaped by the textures and rhythms that this new and exciting technology could generate.
I think we were more interested in what we could experiment with rather than compete with well-established genres. The future looked exciting." In August 1982 McKellar issued a solo track, "Some Good Things to Do", which was compiled on a give-away cassette, Fast Forward 12, with Fast Forward Magazine.
McKellar produced the group"s debut single at the Triple J studios in Sydney, he remembered "lieutenant sounded amazing and it was a strong song and as it got whittled down it focused it more and more.
I guess it was obvious to me there was definitely talent involved." From 30 October 1994 it peaked at Number. 1 for six weeks on the ARIA Singles Chart. McKellar was nominated as Producer of the Year.
McKellar worked as a producer and sound engineer at Hardboiled Productions (1996-2010).
He has also worked with many rock bands such as Dirty Three, The Mark Of Cain, Frenzal Rhomb, The Butterfly Effect, Kisschasy, Ash, The Sunpilots, Tumbleweed, Nitocris, One Dollar Short, The Getaway Plan, The Hot Lies, Crash Arcadia and Chasing Gravity. He currently works at American Broadcasting Company Radio National as an audio engineer
