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Pink Floyd are set to release their first album in 20 years, marking their return with a thought provoking album cover.
Liu Xiangwei has more.
Reporter:
In choosing the artwork for what may or may not be their last album, the band held a competition asking people to submit ideas for the album cover.
Among those who submitted works was renowned artist Damien Hirst and Peter Saville's agency. However, in the end it was a design by an 18-year-old student from Cairo, which caught Aubrey Powell's eye.
Powell is the Creative Director for Pink Floyd and co-founder of the company Hipgnosis, who have worked with the band for over 40 years on their previous album designs and stage production.
(SB1, Powell)
"Who could have possibly known we'd find the Pink Floyd album cover in the Middle East. It's just bizarre".
The winning design came from a young Egyptian digital animation student. It shows a man rowing a boat on clouds. As Powell explains it was then re-imaged and re-shot.
(SB2, Powell)
"We bought the rights to the picture from him and then we had to recreate it because it wasn't quite good enough and exactly what we wanted. And the idea was never the less there. I'll show it to you. This is the actual album cover, almost identical to the illustration that Ahmed did, however, this is all digitally done in England, re shot in the studio. As you can see the cloud with the young man rowing the boat, going into the sunset and for 'Endless River' it just seemed such an appropriate image. And I don't know if there's anything related to going off into the sunset, related to Pink Floyd because this will probably be their last album."
The final artwork was projected onto a large eight meter lit installation in London's South Bank. The same projection was also shown across 10 cities around the world including New York. Powell further explains the album cover.
(SB3, Powell)
"There's something very stirring about it and very magical and very enigmatic, and that's Pink Floyd".
According to a statement released by the band, "it is an album of mainly ambient and instrumental music based on the 1993/4 Division Bell sessions."
The new record, called "The Endless River," is due for release on 10th of November. A major exhibition to celebrate Pink Floyd is also in the planning for next year.
For Studio+, this is Liu Xiangwei.
