Members of the British rock band Pink Floyd decided to reunite for the first time in almost 30 years to record a song in support of Ukraine.

David Gilmour and Nick Mason, two longtime members of the band at their peak, joined forces with composer/writer/director Nitin Souney and bassist Guy Pratt on Hey Hey Rise Up.!

In the first recording of the group after the 1994 album The Division Bell, the musicians used the vocals of the Ukrainian performer, member of the Boombox rock band Andriy Khlyvnyuk, from the video published on Instagram, where he performs the famous protest song " The last line from this song gave the name to the new Pink Floyd track..

According to Gilmour, whose daughter-in-law is Ukrainian, Khlyvnyuk's performance in Kyiv was so powerful that it pushed him to write his own music..

For many years, Gilmour stubbornly resisted the persuasion of Mason and Roger Waters, two members (besides Syd Barrett) of the original line-up of the group, to revive Pink Floyd.. But Russia's invasion of Ukraine forced him to change his mind..

“We, like many, have experienced rage and disappointment at this vile act, when one of the strongest powers in the world invaded an independent, peaceful, democratic country and kills its people,” Gilmour said..

He said that he first learned about the Boombox group and Khlyvnyuk when in 2015 he performed at a concert in London in support of the free theater of Belarus.. Boomboxes were also on the program, but Khlyvnyuk could not come then due to visa problems. As a result, the musicians "

“Recently I learned that Andriy canceled his American tour with Boombox and returned to Ukraine to join the territorial defense forces,” says the musician. - Well, then I saw this incredible video on Instagram, where he stands on the Kiev square against the backdrop of a temple with golden domes and sings in the middle of silence, because because of the war there is no movement there. It was powerful and I wanted to put it into a musical form"

When Gilmour was working on a new song, he managed to talk to Khlyvnyuk, who said that he was in the hospital with a shrapnel wound..

On March 11, a message appeared on Gilmour's official website in which he says that, together with the whole world, he strongly condemns the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and that all Pink Floyd recordings since 1987 and all David Gilmour solo recordings from that day are deleted from digital platforms in.

" - We want to raise funds for charities and raise people's spirits. We want to express support for Ukraine and thus show that from the point of view of the whole world, a superpower has no right to invade an independent democratic country, which Ukraine has become."

The video for the new song was directed and written by Matt Whitecross, and the cover of the single features Ukraine's national flower, the sunflower, by Cuban artist Yosan Leon.