Pink Floyd release first song in 28 years, to benefit Ukraine relief (listen)
Pink Floyd have just released their first new song in 28 years, to raise money for Ukraine relief. It’s called “Hey Hey Rise Up,” and it was made by guitarist David Gilmour and drummer Nick Mason, the only remaining members of the classic ’70s lineup, along with Guy Pratt, who’s been Floyd’s bassist since Roger Waters left, and keyboardist Nitin Sawhney, while lead vocals are actually a sample of Ukrainian singer Andriy Khlyvnyuk (of the band BoomBox) singing the Ukrainian protest song “Oh, The Red Viburnum In The Meadow.” Listen below.
The Guardian gives background on the song came to be:
A couple of weeks ago, Pink Floyd’s guitarist and singer David Gilmour was asked if he’d seen the Instagram feed of Andriy Khlyvnyuk, frontman of Ukrainian rock band BoomBox. Gilmour had performed live with BoomBox in 2015, at a London benefit gig for the Belarus Free Theatre – they played a brief, endearingly raw set of Pink Floyd songs and Gilmour solo tracks – but events had moved on dramatically since then: at the end of Feburary, Khlyvnyuk had abandoned BoomBox’s US tour in order to fight against the Russian invasion.
On his Instagram, Gilmour found a video of the singer in military fatigues, a rifle slung over his shoulder, standing outside Kyiv’s St Sofia Cathedral, belting out an unaccompanied version of Oh, the Red Viburnum in the Meadow, a 1914 protest song written in honour of the Sich Riflemen who fought both in the first world war and the Ukrainian war of independence. “I thought: that is pretty magical and maybe I can do something with this,” says Gilmour. “I’ve got a big platform that [Pink Floyd] have worked on for all these years. It’s a really difficult and frustrating thing to see this extraordinarily crazy, unjust attack by a major power on an independent, peaceful, democratic nation. The frustration of seeing that and thinking ‘what the fuck can I do?’ is sort of unbearable.”
The result is Hey Hey, Rise Up!, a new single by Pink Floyd that samples Khlyvnyuk’s performance.
Read much more of the story here.
In related news, Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets (of which Guy Pratt is also a member) are touring this year, including NYC-area shows on 9/26 at The Capitol Theatre and 10/12 at Beacon Theatre.
