In 2010, Sydney Opera House’s Graphic Festival commissioned FourPlay String Quartet to score a live reading of award-winning English author/screenwriter Neil Gaiman's novella, The Truth Is A Cave In The Black Mountains.
This prompted ongoing collaborative endeavours; their project reimagining the zodiac – for which traditional signs were replaced with new objects – birthed Clock, this album’s opener, amongst its resulting suite of songs. And how’s this for a creative process? To emulate a clock ticking, FourPlay set a metronome to 60 bpm and then composed this entire piece – resplendent with haunting, repeated strings motif – “in one improvised run”. Then when they shared Clock with Gaiman, he immediately thought a reading of Shakespeare’s Sonnet #12 (“When I do count the clock that tells the time…”) would be complementary – such genius!
The quartet replicate seagull cries and birdsong to open the harrowing Poem First Read On January 26 2011 At The Sydney Opera House, which details “casual genocide” and should be added to our school curriculums: “We’re transients, the land remains/ Until its outlines wash away/ While night falls down like drop bears don’t/ To swallow up Australia Day.” Then closer Oceanic evokes being lost at sea before trilling strings inject thrilling motion, like swelling waves threatening to engulf a small vessel.
Seeped in nuanced, atmospheric instrumental detail, Signs Of Life will delight fans of Nick Cave and Warren Ellis’s soundtrack work.
Label: Instrumental Recordings
Release date: Out now
