Pink Floyd – “Hey Hey, Rise Up!”
Hey, a new Pink Floyd song! As explained in a Guardian story Thursday, guitarist David Gilmour and drummer Nick Mason — the core remaining Floyd members since Roger Waters’ departure in 1985 — have come together to record their first new song since the sessions for 1994’s The Division Bell. Although outtakes from those sessions became the final Pink Floyd album The Endless River in 2014, the new “Hey Hey, Rise Up!” is the first new Floyd composition in 28 years.
The song, which is being released to benefit humanitarian relief in war-torn Ukraine, also features Waters’ longtime replacement Guy Pratt on bass and Nitin Sawhney on keyboards. It includes a sample of Andriy Khlyvnyuk, singer for the Ukrainian rock band BoomBox, singing the century-old Ukrainian protest song “Oh, The Red Viburnum In The Meadow” in military fatigues outside St. Sofia Cathedral in Kyiv. Gilmour, who once played a benefit show with Khlyvnyuk, was inspired by the footage and tracked down Khlyvnyuk to correspond about the new track, including a FaceTime session from Khlyvnyuk’s hospital bed after he was injured by a mortar.
Hear “Hey Hey, Rise Up!” below.