Author Neil Gaiman to Release First Album with Australian String Quartet

Creator of The Sandman, Stardust, American Gods, and countless graphic novels and books, Neil Gaiman is releasing his first album of original music, Signs of Life (Instrumental Recordings) in collaboration with the Australian FourPlay String Quartet, out April 28, 2023.

All words, music, and backing vocals provided by Gaiman, the album comes after the author and quartet have collaborated for more than 12 years. The quartet was first commissioned to compose a soundtrack for Gaiman’s 2010 novella, The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains, which they later performed together.

Ahead of the April 2023 release, Gaiman and the quartet shared two new singles, “Bloody Sunrise” and “Credo,” the former accompanied by an official music video, directed by James Chappell, featuring Goodridge, who sings lead vocals, lying in a coffin and rising to perform with the FourPlay String Quartet in a graveyard. Gaiman, who also sings backing vocals, also makes a cameo on a flickering television screen at the beginning of the video.

“I’m not entirely certain when I fell in love with a string quartet,” said Gaiman in a statement, “I remember our first date, though. It was a day spent in a tiny room somewhere in the backstage maze of the 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.”

Gaiman toured with the Quartet and when they played Carnegie Hall in New York City together they rehearsed a song to perform together instead of having the author read a poem to their arrangement.

“We performed our song on the stage of Carnegie Hall, and that felt a lot like something special,” added Gaiman. “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.”

Photo by Gary Miller/FilmMagic