Pink Floyd offers release date, cover art for album ‘The Endless River’

The new Pink Floyd album, called “The Endless River,” will be released on Nov. 10, and the band has offered more details on its creation. Recorded by the trio of David Gilmour, Rick Wright and Nick Mason -- Roger Waters is no longer a member of the band -- the album is mostly instrumental, and expands on ideas originally laid down during the sessions that produced 1994’s “The Division Bell.”

Produced by a consortium including Gilmour, Roxy Music guitarist Phil Manzanera, Youth and Andy Jackson, “The Endless River” was a long time coming, according to Gilmour in a statement.

“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.”

Mason characterized the record in a statement as a tribute to the late Wright, Pink Floyd’s longtime keyboardist and multi-instrumentalist. Wright died in 2008.

“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,” said Mason. “Listening back to the sessions, it really brought home to me what a special player he was.” Only one song on the 18-song album will feature lyrics.

The band also released the album’s art, the first since Pink Floyd’s longtime designer Storm Thorgerson of Hipgnosis passed away in 2013. Picking up where he left off is an 18-year-old Egyptian digital artist named Ahmed Emad Eldin, who created an image of a man rowing a boat across an ocean of clouds.

“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,’” said Aubrey “Po” Powell, an original Hipgnosis partner.

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