Pink Floyd has released their first ever music in
decades to support the Ukrainian rescue effort. The new song, titled 'Hey, Hey,
Rise Up,' uses a sample of Ukrainian band Boombox's singer, Andriy Khlyvnyuk
and is the band's first original music since their 1994 album 'The Division
Bell.' The song's revenues will be donated to Ukraine Humanitarian Relief.
According to a press statement, Pink Floyd recorded 'Hey,
Hey, Rise Up' on 30th March this year. Watch the music video
directed by Mat Whitecross:
Talking about the new single in a statement, Gilmour said: “I
hope it will receive wide support and publicity. We want to raise funds for
humanitarian charities, and raise morale. 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.”
The singer, who hails from a Ukrainian family, added: “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.”
Discussing the creation of the single, Gilmour added: “We
recorded the track and video in our barn where we did all our Von Trapped
Family live streams during lockdown. It’s the same room that we did the ‘Barn
Jams’ with Rick Wright back in 2007. Janina Pedan made the set in a day and we
had Andriy singing on the screen while we played, so the four of us had a
vocalist, albeit not one who was physically present with us.”
Gilmour also mentioned that he had performed with
Khlyvnyuk's band in 2015 as part of a benefit concert for the Belarus Free
Theatre, and that the singer was in the middle of a US tour with Boombox when
he returned to his motherland to fight the Russians in February.
Khlyvnyuk is sampled on 'Hey, Hey, Rise Up!' singing the patriotic Ukrainian anthem 'The Red Viburnum' on Kyiv's Sofiyskaya Square, which was captured in a viral Instagram video recently shared to Gilmour.
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Image Courtesy: Stereogum
“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,” Gilmour said. “It was a powerful moment that made me want to put it to music.”
“I thought: that is pretty magical and maybe I can do
something with this,” Gilmour told the Guardian of the footage in a new
interview about the comeback. “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.”
Following his injuries incurred during the battle, Gilmour
was able to talk from his hospital bed. “I played him a little bit of the song
down the phone line and he gave me his blessing,” he said. “We both hope to do
something together in person in the future.”
To show their support for Ukraine, Pink Floyd and David
Gilmour withdrew their music from streaming sites in Russia and Belarus last
month.
Writing on Twitter, Pink Floyd said: “To stand with the
world in strongly condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the works of Pink
Floyd, from 1987 onwards, and all of David Gilmour’s solo recordings are being
removed from all digital music providers in Russia an Belarus from today.”
Gilmour added: “Russian soldiers, stop killing your
brothers. There will be no winners in this war. My daughter in law is Ukrainian
and my granddaughters want to visit and know their beautiful country. Stop this
before it is all destroyed.”
---Silviya.Y
