Neil Gaiman announces new album with FourPlay Quartet, shares 2 singles

Writer Neil Gaiman has been busy with the Netflix adaptation of his acclaimed graphic novel series The Sandman (which came out in August) and he'll continue to keep busy in the world of TV with the second season of Good Omens, which is due in summer of 2023 on Amazon Prime. Amidst all that he's found time to record an album of original music. Signs of Life, a collaboration with Australia's FourPlay Quartet, is due out April 28 via Instrumental Recordings.

"I’m not entirely certain when I fell in love with a string quartet," Neil says. "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."

"Neil’s mastery of storytelling, and his crafting of words, is second to none," FourPlay Quartet add. "Among the members of FourPlay, we have been fans of Neil’s for many years, and it was a golden opportunity to work with him. Nevertheless, we could never have expected to find him to also be such a master of pacing, such a musical performer and wordsmith. We’re joyful to count him as a friend as well as a collaborator, someone we spend pleasurable time with and someone we never fail to create beautiful, glittering things with."

The album features collaborations between Neil and the quartet, Neil's poems and stories set to music, and an instrumental inspired by his work. They've shared two singles, "Credo" and "Bloody Sunrise," which Neil says is "a song I wrote about a sad vampire, beautifully realised by the FourPlay Quartet." He joins Lara Goodridge on vocals and appears briefly at the beginning of the accompanying video, which you can watch below.

Neil Gaiman & The FourPlay String Quartet - Signs of Live
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NEIL GAIMAN & THE FOURPLAY QUARTET - 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*