Neil Gaiman is transitioning from writing books to songs with his debut album, Signs of Life. A collaborative project with Australia’s FourPlay String Quartet, the project is out April 28th, 2023 via Instrumental Recordings, while first singles “Bloody Sunrise” and “Credo” are available to stream now.
Gaiman began working with the FourPlay String Quartet way back in 2010, when the orchestra was commissioned to write a soundtrack for a performance Gaiman was planning for his novella The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains. From there, the artists began workshopping the idea of creating a suite of works inspired by the Zodiac. Ultimately, the finished album comprises collaborative songs between Gaiman and the quartet, as well as poems and stories written by Gaiman set to the quartet’s music, two “covers” of songs from Gaiman’s previous projects, and an instrumental inspired by Gaiman’s work. In a statement, the writer shared:
“I’m not entirely certain when I fell in love with a string quartet. I remember our first date, though. It was a day spent in a tiny room somewhere in the backstage maze of Sydney Opera House. We played the next night on the stage of the Sydney Opera House. It was remarkable. It was so much fun we did it again. We did a tour together, but when we reached Carnegie Hall, we decided we needed something better than me reading a poem as our encore, so we stole some time from soundcheck and rehearsed a song. And then we performed our song on the stage of the Carnegie Hall, and that felt a lot like something special. We started to build a repertoire, and when I was in Australia we would make music together. These are some of the things we’ve made together. It’s been a long fallow winter, the last two and a half years. Here are signs of life.”
Check out the artwork and tracklist for Signs of Life below (pre-orders are ongoing), and watch Gaiman sing alongside Lara Goodridge in the music video for “Bloody Sunrise,” a song the author said he wrote from the perspective of a “lovelorn, pining vampiress.”
Gaiman last made headlines by airing some new drama about The Sandman, including the fun fact that Michael Jackson wanted to play Morpheus back in the ’90s and that Gaiman killed an earlier version of the film by leaking its script, which he called “the worst script I’ve ever been sent.”
Signs of Life Artwork:
Signs of Life Tracklist:
01. Clock
02. Möbius Strip
03. Bloody Sunrise
04. The Wreckers
05. Song of the Song
06. Credo
07). Neverwhere
08. Poem first read on January 26th 2011 at the Sydney Opera House
09. The Problem with Saints
10. In Transit
11. Signs of a Life
12. Oceanic*
* = Digital/CD version only
