Ian Lilburne and the art of darkness

Perth singer-songwriter Ian Lilburne is set to celebrate the release of his latest album, Left Hand of Darkness, with a special performance at The Ellington Jazz Club on Monday, October 26, with tickets on sale now. Joining Lilburne for the launch will be Grammy Award-winning violinist Emily Gelineau, who contributed violin and backing vocals to the record, alongside Sam Ray on backing vocals and Lucy Browning on electric bass. Ahead of the show, BRAYDEN EDWARDS caught up with Lilburne to explore the story behind Left Hand of Darkness, the musical and literary influences that helped shape the record, and what audiences can look forward to at the show.

Congratulations on the release of your new album, Left Hand of Darkness. How long has this album been in the works, and how does it feel to finally share it with the world?

Thanks Brayden.

I started work on the collection not long after releasing my last album. Mystery of the Rose, in 2021. Some of the songs were older but many were written from scratch during COVID. I had the selection and sequence mapped out by the mid ’23, then put it in a drawer to let it settle. When I came to record it last year, everything popped into place very quickly. We got all of the parts down in one or two sessions each. That was gratifying. After putting so much time and thought into it, I am very happy with the way it came together. It’s a delight to finally have it out and the feedback so far has been great.

Having been writing and playing guitar for more than 50 years, what do you feel you approached differently on this record compared with your previous work?

Playing an instrument is a lifetime’s adventure of discovery. Although I’ve been playing and writing for most of my life, it’s only over the last twenty years that I’ve started to perform more and record. I was never a rocknroller. My music was always more introspective, so the pub rock scene of my youth was not for me. Instead, I was drawn to the Perth Fringe, thinking that might be a good fit. It was, but not how I anticipated. Discovering I had some skill as an organiser, I wound up coordinating the Fringe, becoming what you would now call a producer/director/CEO. As such, I put my own creative ambitions on hold while helping other artists fulfill theirs. It was only when my day job started to wind down that I returned more seriously to my own music.

I’ve now released four albums and each one is a step forward. I like to work closely with a producer to bring the songs to life and I’ve been fortunate to have worked with two extraordinary people: Peter Grandison and Lee Buddle. As I don’t have a standing band, on the earlier albums we engaged session musicians. Some dozen people appeared on my first album while there were eight of us on Mystery of the Rose.

In contrast, Left Hand of Darkness is just Emily Gelineau and me. As well as her sublime violin, Emily does all the backing vocals, while I play the bass as well as acoustic guitar and sing the lead vocals. The music sounds rich and complex but is actually quite lean.

Another key change was the selection and sequence of songs. In the past, I went into the studio with a set of songs but no idea of how they’d fit together. On the first few albums, I worked out the running order at the very end, once all the songs were down. On Mystery of the Rose, I developed the order early in the process and we arranged them in sequence. This meant that the musical and thematic movement was much stronger and the set as a whole more unified.

On the new album, I took this process one step further and wrote, or revised, the songs with the sequence in place. As a result, both musically and lyrically, the set is even more tightly integrated, an intuitive arc. Every time I play it through, I’m taken on an emotional journey and by the end feel quite uplifted. I hope it has the same impact on the listener.

The inclusion of Emily Gelineau lifts the songs to another level. How did that collaboration come about, and what did she bring to the record?

I can actually thank X-Press for introducing me to Emily. I met her through writing reviews. I’d seen a clip of her on YouTube playing with an American jazz quartet but didn’t see her live until a Fringe World show she did a few years back with singer Sylvie Cornes, Sincerely L Cohen. Being a Leonard Cohen nut, I was impressed and realised she had another side to her playing. Later, I reviewed one of her Brazilian shows with Jazz Tupiniquim and another jazz collaboration with Jessie Gordon. I was struck by her extraordinary playing and versatility. Not only is she a virtuoso violinist but she knows her way around the piano and has an infectious voice. Eventually I plucked up the courage to ask if she would play on this recording. To my delight, she liked the music and agreed.

Emily started playing violin when she was three years old. She had the classical training and can play in, and arrange music for, orchestras. Her specialty though, is gypsy jazz. She can be a vibrant and ferocious player very much in the vein of Stephane Grappelli. But she also has a sensitive and meditative side, which I saw in the Cohen show. Softer, slower, and more simply melodic, this is the side she bought to our collaboration. It is the perfect foil for my neo-classical, folk guitar style and enhances the reflective nature of my lyrics.

As both a poet and musician, your influences extend well beyond music. What writers, artists or other influences helped shape this record?

I wasn’t consciously referencing any specific artists on this album but my creative imagination has been shaped over decades by many of the masters.

I had the great good fortune to study English Literature in the golden age of free tertiary education where I was exposed to modernism and the classics. I fell in love with both. It was a privilege to study in-depth writers like Joyce, Eliot and Shakespeare. Later I threw myself into Nabokov and Borges. All blokes I know, but deeply influential. Their aesthetics flooded my imagination. But then, I’ve always loved spy novels as well. The twists and turns in writers like Dashiell Hammet, John le Carré, even Ian Fleming, have found their way into some of my song structures.

Poetically, it’s more the great songwriters who have influenced me: Cohen of course, but also Dylan, Laurie Anderson, Lou Reed and Joni Mitchell. Film too, has found its way into the mix with directors like Kubrick, Peter Greenaway and David Lynch. More blokes.

That may sound pretentious but I’ve been an avid reader, listener and watcher all my life, and so many things have been filtered into my creative mix.

Is there an overarching theme or idea that ties the album together? And what does Left Hand of Darkness mean to you?

I don’t like talking about what my songs mean as I tend to think meaning is a collaboration between the creator and the listener. What the creative was thinking when they make a work is only one aspect of it, how it resonates with a listener and the thoughts it provokes in them is equally as important. I don’t like to limit that open relationship.

For this collection, the title is key. I chose it intuitively—without analysing it too much. One of those ah-ha moments, it fitted the mood of the songs. But having been asked this same question a few times now, I’ve started to think about it more consciously.

Put it this way: a right-hand support is the key henchperson, the one who enables the ‘boss’ to bring their ideas to fruition. The left-hand support, in contrast, sits a bit more in the background and fills in the gaps. They add to the texture, making the whole richer and deeper. Lately, many people are saying that we live in dark and dangerous times. Rather than write directly about the right-hand geo-political issues—climate change, inequality, tyranny and war—I chose to explore, in a left-field fashion, the less prominent issues that temper the human conundrum: the complexity of male-female relations, how do you fit into this difficult world, the interplay of light and dark.

You’ll have a larger lineup for the upcoming live show. Who will be joining you on stage, and how will they help bring these songs to life?

The plan is to replicate the sound of the album. Although Emily can sing and play violin at the same time, it’s harder to deliver backing vocals, and I can’t play the bass and acoustic guitar simultaneously. If I could I’d never be out of work!

Sam Ray, who is trained in both opera and jazz and whom I’ve been singing with for the last ten years or so, will be the second vocalist while Lucy Browning, a great young player on the Perth jazz scene, will be playing double bass. Sam will take over the lead vocal on a couple of the songs, and on a few others we will do a more elaborate duet than appears on the album. Lucy brings some jazz finesse to the bass parts that will subtly temper the set.

It was important for me to enlist an all-female band. Usually in jazz, you have a female singer backed by three blokes. I wanted to reverse that. More importantly though, as Perth has grown to become a city of musicians, an amazing community of great female musicians has developed here. I wanted to do my bit for the cause and shine a light on that.

Beyond the show at The Ellington, what else do you have coming up? Will there be more opportunities to catch you performing your music or poetry live?

I’ve been focused so much on the launch that I haven’t made any plans beyond that. I want to do some more recording with Emily as she is heading away from Perth next year. I hope we have a chance to redo this show before she goes but I’ve yet to set that up, possibly in January. Most Saturday afternoons, I’m at the Perth Poetry Club in the Moon Café, one of many poets who get up and air their verses. I was the feature poet there at the start of September but that won’t come up again for a while. The surest bet at the moment, if you can’t make the Ellington on Monday October 26, is to listen to the album. It’s on Bandcamp and all the major streaming services.

Ian Lilburne launches his new album, Left Hand of Darkness, at The Ellington Jazz Club on Monday, October 26, 2026. Tickets are on sale now from ellingtonjazz.com.au