Pink Floyd issued a new single entitled “Hey Hey Rise Up” to benefit the people of Ukraine. The track marks the first new original music from the legendary band in 28 years.
“Hey Hey Rise Up” features Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour and drummer Nick Mason accompanied by longtime touring bassist Guy Pratt as well as keyboardist Nitin Sawhney. The song also includes vocals from Ukrainian singer Andriy Khlyvnyuk of Boombox.
Pink Floyd’s last album of new original material was 1994’s The Division Bell. The group issued The Endless River, which consisted mainly of instrumental Division Bell outtakes, in 1994. Gilmour, Masson, Pratt and Sawhney recorded “Hey Hey Rise Up” last Wednesday, March 30 and plucked Khlyvnyuk’s vocals from an Instagram post in which he sang the Ukrainian protest song “The Red Viburnum In The Meadow” within Kyiv’s Sofiyskaya Square.
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“We, like so many, have been feeling the fury and the frustration of this vile act of an independent, peaceful democratic country being invaded and having its people murdered by one of the world’s major powers,” stated David Gilmour in a press release. Gilmour has both a Ukrainian daughter-in-law and grandchildren.
Gilmour explained how he met Andriy and Boombox in the following statement:
“In 2015, I played a show at Koko in London in support of the Belarus Free Theatre, whose members have been imprisoned. Pussy Riot and the Ukrainian band, Boombox, were also on the bill. They were supposed to do their own set, but their singer Andriy had visa problems, so the rest of the band backed me for my set – we played Wish You Were Here for Andriy that night. Recently I read that Andriy had left his American tour with Boombox, had gone back to Ukraine, and joined up with the Territorial Defense. Then I saw this incredible video on Instagram, where he stands in a square in Kyiv with this beautiful gold-domed church and sings in the silence of a city with no traffic or background noise because of the war. It was a powerful moment that made me want to put it to music.”
“I hope it will receive wide support and publicity. We want to raise funds for humanitarian charities, and raise morale,” added the guitarist. “We want express our support for Ukraine and in that way, show that most of the world thinks that it is totally wrong for a superpower to invade the independent democratic country that Ukraine has become.”
“Hey Hey Rise Up” arrived with a Mat Whitecross-directed video. Check out the visual below:
