Pink Floyd have shared the new single, ‘Hey Hey Rise Up’. It’s the British band’s first release since their apparent final album, 2014’s ambient and instrumental release, The Endless River. ‘Hey Hey Rise Up’ is the David Gilmour-led group’s first new music since their 1994 album, The Division Bell.
‘Hey Hey Rise Up’ features vocals from Andriy Khlyvnyuk of Ukrainian band Boombox. Gilmour and his band mates, including Pink Floyd’s founding drummer, Nick Mason, as well as bass player Guy Pratt and keyboard player Nitin Sawhney, recorded the track last Wednesday, 30th March.
Khlyvnyuk’s vocals were taken from an Instagram post of him singing in Kyiv’s Sofiyskaya Square in late February. The song he is singing is ‘Oh, The Red Viburnum In The Meadow,’ a Ukrainian protest song written during World War I.
Gilmour was already a fan of Khlyvnyuk’s band, Boombox. “In 2015, I played a show at Koko in London in support of the Belarus Free Theatre, whose members have been imprisoned,” Gilmour said in a statement. “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.”
Gilmour had the idea for ‘Hey Hey Rise Up’ after learning that Khlyvnyuk had left his American tour with Boombox to return to Ukraine and join the Territorial Defense. “Then I saw this incredible video on Instagram,” said Gilmour, “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.”
‘Hey Hey Rise Up’ is raising funds for humanitarian charities. Listen to the track below.
