LONDON (AP) – The band announced Thursday that Pink Floyd will release their first new music in nearly three decades to raise money for the Ukrainian people.
“Hey Hey Rise Up” features Pink Floyd members David Gilmore and Nick Mason, voiced by Ukrainian singer Andrei Khlivnyuk of BoomBox. Roger Waters, who left the band in the 1980s, was not included.
The track features Khlivnyuk, who sings a Ukrainian patriotic song from a clip he recorded in front of St. Sophia’s Cathedral in Kiev and posted on social media.
Gilmore, who released BoomBox in London in 2015, said the video was “a powerful moment that pushed me to put it to music.”
After the Russian invasion, Khlivniuk stopped traveling to the United States to return to Ukraine and join part of the defense of the territory.
Gilmour said he spoke with Khlivniuk, who was recovering from a mortar wound at the hospital before writing the song. He said, “I played him a little song on the phone and he blessed me. We both hope to do something together personally in the future. “
The song will come out on Friday and the group said the proceeds will go to Ukraine’s Humanitarian Aid Fund.
“We want to show our support for Ukraine and in this way show that most of the world thinks it is completely wrong for a superpower to invade an independent democracy that has become Ukraine,” Gilmour said.
Pink Floyd was founded in London in the mid -1960s and helped shape the psychedelic scene in the UK before the release of influential albums in the 1970s, including: The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here and The Wall.
Waters left the original cast in 1985 and the remaining members of Pink Floyd were last recorded together on the 1994 album The Division Bell. After keyboardist Richard Wright died in 2008, Gilmour said he had doubts about dating Pink Floyd.
“Hey Hey Rise Up” also features Guy Pratt on bass and Nitin Sohn on keyboard.
Source: Huffpost
