Neil Gaiman and FourPlay String Quartet’s ‘Signs of Life’: A Möbius Strip, a Clock and a Bloody Sunrise

It begins with the slow ticking of a metronome. The pendulum oscillating at 60bpm, not unlike the ticking of a timepiece, which is the song’s namesake – “Clock.” It is hypnotic, more so as the instruments join in following the beat of the metronome and there’s already a strange dreamlike fog that settles in your mind, drifting in via your ears when Neil Gaiman begins to read Shakespeare’s Sonnet #12.  

When I do count the clock that tells the time,  

And see the brave day sunk in hideous night; 

Fitting in a way, I suppose, since Gaiman is the creator of DC’s Sandman. His debut studio album sounds like it has been plucked straight from the realm of the Dreaming where Morpheus reigns. 

The first track on Signs of Life was originally a wordless piece created by Australia’s FourPlay String Quartet in a single session. With the metronome’s ticking as the rhythmic backbone, the song naturally fell into place. Gaiman on hearing it, felt it fitting to use Shakespeare’s Sonnet #12 (who is the third collaborator for this song). Sonnet #12 makes for an ideal musical accompaniment with its alliterative turn of phrase and lyrical nature.   

The imagery of time bleeds onto track two, “Möbius Strip.” Gaiman recounts his childhood where his grandfather taught him how to make the magical Möbius Strip. The lyrics trace the path of life or rather, time as a loop or a Möbius Strip. One moment your grandfather is teaching you how to make one and the next you are a grandfather doing the same. Two sides of the same paper, somewhere along the strip the past, the present and the future, we end up where we started, back at the beginning.

It’s the same concept at work in Gaiman’s Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? Batman attends his own funeral, saying goodbye, the final image of the Bat-signal transforming into the hands of a doctor handing over an infant Bruce Wayne to his mother Martha. Time as a loop, an endless cycle. The accompanying plucking of the strings that flow with the lyrics is akin to running a pen along the paper, tracing the strip. The repeating notes emulate the infinite cycle, ending just as it began… or is it beginning just as it ends?  

Some of the songs, like “Neverwhere” and “Oceanic” are instrumental. No words are needed as the strings weave the story themselves. Both perhaps are drawing inspiration or paying homage to Gaiman’s novels Neverwhere and The Ocean at the End of the Lane respectively. 

Most of the songs are spoken word style, with Gaiman on lead vocals. The lyrics against a dramatical musical backdrop make for powerful imagery — whether it’s Gaiman’s philosophy on life in “Credo” or “In Transit,” which follows the life of astronomer Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, who first confirmed Einstein’s theory of relativity. “In Transit” actually details Eddington’s expedition to Brazil to observe the total solar eclipse of May 29th, 1919.  

“Song of the Song” is a blend of both, where the verse curls around the words, honey sweet with a hidden lemon drop in the middle, charming yet ominous. After all, “Songs are just sweet illusions made of words.”  

Two of the tracks featured on the album are covers of songs Gaiman had written before, one being “The Problem With Saints” (first released in 2012, An Evening With Neil Gaiman & Amanda Palmer). The song is a hypothetical scenario in which Joan of Arc has been mysteriously resurrected — “She says it clears your head when you come back from the dead.” While her “message is divine,” her return does spell trouble for any unfortunate soul (who tries to explain the era she now inhabits) that crosses paths with her sword, meeting a bloody end. “The Problem With Saints” has a rhythm like a march, fitting since it functions as her call to arms.  

“Bloody Sunrise” (which along with “Clock” are the only two to have music videos) was originally written by Gaiman in 2011 for a project where he was given a title as a sort of writing prompt. The original version had Claudia Gonson (of the Magnetic Fields) on vocals. It was a melancholic love song with a 1960s vibe to it about a very lonely vampire. The FourPlay version is a more optimistic take on the song, reminiscent of James Taylor’s take on “The Drifter’s Up on the Roof.” Gaiman (who appears on a television screen in the graveyard) joins violinist Lara Goodridge on vocals. It’s interesting to note that long ago as part of an anthology in The Mammoth Book of Vampires (1992), Gaiman had written Vampire Sestina, a sestina about a lonely vampire waiting for his lover to rise from her grave, hoping to have turned her into a fellow nocturnal being. Both feature lonely vampires at graveyards yearning for companionship and both tragically end up alone — two sides of the same Möbius Strip.  

Gaiman’s voyage into the realm of music is only just beginning. With the second season of Terry Pratchett’s and his novel Good Omens (1990) underway, Gaiman plans to work music into the television adaptation.    

Signs of Life is haunting, whimsical and hypnotic. It has you under its spell from the very first note. You cannot escape and you will remain transfixed, listening until the last of the echoes of “Oceanic” has faded away but remains etched in your memory.  

But how did the Signs of Life come about?  

In 2010, the stars aligned and the Sydney Opera House’s Graphic Festival commissioned FourPlay to create a soundtrack to accompany Gaiman’s novella The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains for a live performance. This creative partnership was to continue further. They toyed with the idea of creating music revolving around the concept of the zodiac signs. Somewhere along the way, the zodiac switched to words and objects exploring the aspects of life. And the very first track was “Clock.”