In a new EPK (Electronic Press Kit), David Gilmour and Nick Mason discuss The Endless River, the new album from Pink Floyd, available from November 10th in Europe and November 11th in North America via Columbia Records.

Audio samples from The Endless River, the long-awaited new Pink Floyd album from David Gilmour, Rick Wright and Nick Mason, can be heard streaming below. The album is produced by David Gilmour, Phil Manzanera, Youth, and Andy Jackson.

David Gilmour states: “The Endless River has as its starting point the music that came from the 1993 Division Bell sessions. We listened to over 20 hours of the three of us playing together and selected the music we wanted to work on for the new album. Over the last year we've added new parts, re-recorded others and generally harnessed studio technology to make a 21st century Pink Floyd album. With Rick gone, and with him the chance of ever doing it again, it feels right that these revisited and reworked tracks should be made available as part of our repertoire.”

Nick Mason comments: “The Endless River is a tribute to Rick. I think this record is a good way of recognizing a lot of what he does and how his playing was at the heart of the Pink Floyd sound. Listening back to the sessions, it really brought home to me what a special player he was.”

The Endless River is mainly a four-sided instrumental album with one song, “Louder Than Words”, which will include new lyrics by Polly Samson.

The concept for the powerful imagery of a man rowing on a “river” of clouds was created by Ahmed Emad Eldin, an 18-year-old Egyptian digital artist. Ahmed’s image was then re-created by Stylorouge, award-winning UK design agency.

Pink Floyd’s album artwork, mostly created by Storm Thorgerson of Hipgnosis, is as legendary as the band’s music. With Storm’s passing in 2013, the task of finding an image that carried on Storm’s legacy passed to Aubrey ‘Po’ Powell, Storm’s original partner in Hipgnosis.

Po states: "When we saw Ahmed’s image it had an instant Floydian resonance. It’s enigmatic and open to interpretation, and is the cover that works so well for The Endless River.”

 

 

The Endless River’s tracklisting runs across four sides, to invoke the album listening experience:

Side 1

"Things Left Unsaid"
"It’s What We Do"
"Ebb And Flow"

Side 2

"Sum"
"Skins"
"Unsung"
"Anisina"  

Side 3

"The Lost Art of Conversation"
"On Noodle Street"
"Night Light"
"Allons-y (1)"       

"Autumn’68"       

"Allons-y (2)"      

"Talkin’ Hawkin’"  

Side 4

"Calling"
"Eyes To Pearls"
"Surfacing"
"Louder Than Words"

Vinyl edition:

 

Box set edition:

 

Further information, including pre-orders for various configurations of this release, can be found at this location.

 

 

According to Music-news.com, BBC Music's Matt Everitt conducted an exclusive interview with David Gilmour and Nick Mason ahead of the release of The Endless River.

In the interview they reveal this will be their last ever album and talked candidly about keyboard player Rick Wright who died in 2008 and to whom the album is a tribute.

“Yes, he has been underestimated by the public, by the media and by us at times I hate to say,” Gilmour says about Wright. “I didn't necessarily always give him his proper due. People have very different attitudes to the way they work and we can become very judgemental and think someone is not quite pulling his weight enough, without realising that theirs is a different weight to pull.”

The only full song with lyrics on The Endless River is called “Louder Than Words” and it talks about the band's relationship and musical connection. When asked about the complex subject Gilmour responded: “Well, Rick is gone. This is the last thing that'll be out from us. I'm pretty certain there will not be any follow up to this. And Polly, my wife, thought that would be a very good lyrical idea to go out on. A way of describing the symbiosis that we have. Or had.”

Read more at Music-news.com.