On first appearance, one might be forgiven for thinking that Larry Killip’s place is a pop-culture museum set in an electronics lab. Cabinets and shelves brim with Kiwiana knick-knacks; the walls of musical memorabilia echo with various local musical legacies. On the floor, vintage instruments – including a 1968 Gold Top Les Paul guitar, which Larry bought new – stand among boxes of records: LPs and family history. On the workstations, amps, mics, and other deconstructed recording tech in various states of repair are stacked, awaiting parts or some TLC from the man himself.
Home is a studio
Larry’s home is wired for sound. voltaic workshop and his basement an engineering shop, the adjacent downstairs potting shed has been converted into a small but perfectly formed master studio, complete with a pocket-sized voice booth.
If a recording project requires extra space or a different sound, then the master studio is connected to the upstairs front room and can be controlled from there via an iPad. The second bedroom is a stand-alone ‘Studio B’ for digitising and archiving old reel-to-reel audio tapes and VHS and Beta videos. Between those various spaces, Larry writes, records, edits, and masters music and sound productions – as well as restoring analogue sound gear – for a diverse gaggle of clients from the advertising, TV, radio, and music worlds.
The Zarks
Larry’s connection with the music business dates back to 1966, when he first jammed rhythm and blues with schoolmates in a band called ‘The Zarks’.
Since then, he has played in various iterations of that band; performed solo at the Nambassa Festival to a crowd of 30,000 right before the headline act, Little River Band; been featured on the compilation album ; released seven albums and plenty of singles of his own; made appearances on , , , , and TV shows; mastered the first two albums by Indie rock darlings The Beths; and performed a medley of his best-known. With more than 500 jingle writing credits to his name, Larry laughs when he says that he is “possibly the most famous person that you have never heard of”.
