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April 8 (UPI) — English rock band Pink Floyd has released new music for the first time in 28 years, with proceeds from the track going to humanitarian relief in Ukraine amid its ongoing conflict with Russia.
The band’s first single since 1994 was released Friday, and it reunites founding member and drummer Nick Mason with guitarist David Gilmour, longtime collaborator and bassist Guy Pratt and keyboardist Nitin Sawhney.
“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,” the 76-year-old Gilmour, who has a Ukrainian daughter-in-law and grandchildren, said in a statement.
The project, titled “Hey Hey Rise Up,” samples a performance by Andriy Khlyvnyuk, who is the frontman of the Ukrainian rock band BoomBox.
Gilmour told The Guardian that he was inspired to make new music after he discovered an Instagram video of Khlyvnyuk, who left BoomBox’s U.S. tour to join the Ukrainian army after Russia invaded.
The recent video showed Khlyvnyuk — dressed in tactical gear with a rifle slung over his shoulder — singing the Ukrainian folk protest song “Oh, the Red Viburnum in the Meadow” in Kyiv’s Sofiyskaya Square.
“I thought, that is pretty magical and maybe I can do something with this,” Gilmour told the outlet.
Gilmour then organized a recording session with Mason, Pratt and Sawhney. Roger Waters, who left the group in 1985, didn’t take part.
Gilmour, Mason and Pratt hadn’t recorded music together since Rick Wright, the band’s keyboard player, died in 2008.
Last month, Pink Floyd removed all its work from 1987 onward and all of Gilmour’s solo projects from all digital music providers in Russia and Belarus “to stand with the world in strongly condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”
