Bio
West Australian songwriter|singer !an L!lburne crafts reflective songs in the key of Cohen―acoustic songs for sensitive souls.
He has been playing acoustic guitar and writing music for more than fifty years and has an original repertoire of some one hundred and twenty songs and instrumentals.
His lyrics are poetic and playful with musical influences ranging from Leonard Cohen, Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson to the American minimalism of Steve Reich.
Working with producers Pete Grandison (Shanghai Twang Studio) and Lee Buddle (Crank Recording), he has released four albums of original material: Ghosts (2011), !nside Out and Back to Front (2016), Mystery of the Rose (2021) and Left Hand of Darkness (2026). See the Shop page for links to the albums.
For L!lburne, poetry and songwriting work as a team. He has been penning poetry as long as he has been writing songs, maybe longer. In recent years, he has been a featured poet at the Perth Poetry Club and regularly reads at their weekly gatherings in the Moon Café. On his lyrics, L!lburne says: ‘My style has been influenced by prose fiction and poetry as much as popular song. I love the wordplay and trickery you find in the great modernist writers like Joyce and Nabokov while the narrative twists of spy stories have provided a rich seam to mine. But my main lyrical influence remains Leonard Cohen. As a teenager, when I first heard Laughing Lenny, a bomb went off. It has been reverberating through my imagination ever since.’
As well as his signature guitar (part folk, part classical) and warm baritone, L!lburne’s recordings feature a selection of Perth’s finest musicians. His major collaborators include gypsy-jazz violinist and singer Emily Gelineau, soprano Sam Ray, and keys maestro Cathy Travers.
Away from music, Lilburne has had a successful career in the arts. As well as freelancing as a manager|producer and artistic director, he was the founding director of the Perth’s Artrage Festival (1986 to 1994), a former manifestation of the Perth Fringe, and artistic director|producer of The University of Western Australia’s centennial celebration LUMINOUSnight (2013). Since 2023, he has been a regular contributor for Perth-based magazines XPress and Seesaw writing on music and the performing arts.
In spring 2020, L!lburne was interviewed on film by artist Julie Fearns-Pheasant for her series Creatives in Isolation and Beyond. He spoke at length about his artistic practice as a songwriter, musician and photographer as well as his arts career. The interview can be viewed in full in the Clips section of the Gallery page.
L!lburne’s lyrics are evocative and relatable, sometimes heartbreaking or darkly witty. His musical influences are vast, his style morphing with stories set in fantastic or mundane worlds of iPhones and snoring. Bernadette Neeling, PERTH NOW
(Ghosts is) a blend of timeless pop-folk songs with country and blues nuances. L!lburne sounds like a mix of Michael Stipe and Tim Freedman while delivering a round of sharp, heartfelt and poetic lyrics. sputnik music
Left Hand of Darkness
!an L!lburne’s latest album, Left Hand of Darkness, is a collaboration with gypsy-jazz violinist Emily Gelineau. Spare in the arrangements, Gelineau’s textured, melodic violin perfectly balances Lilburne’s intricate guitar picking and enhances the reflective nature of his lyrics.
Conceived as a song-cycle, the thirteen songs in the selection are interwoven with instrumentals. Emanating from the suspended time of the COVID lockdown and loosely based on the theme of space and time, this sophisticated and strangely cool set takes a sideways glance at the human conundrum.
On the recording Lilburne plays bass as well as guitar while, in addition to her signature violin, Gelineau delivers the backing vocals.
Instruments
After a tentative start on piano, !an L!lburne found his true instrument, the acoustic guitar. An adept finger-picker, his preferred axe now is a Spanish classical, though he also plays bass and occasional electric guitar.
His primary instrument is a Blueridge Spanish guitar (Brett). He also plays an Ibanez electric bass (Fret), Chet Atkins Epiphone solid-body nylon string electric (Chet), Taylor hollow-body electric (Speck), Yamaha FG300 acoustic (Old Regret), Yamaha APX 1000 acoustic (Antoinette) and occasionally a Martinez six string banjo (Rastus).
