Corsham drummer Nick Mason has teamed up with guitarist Dave Gilmour to reunite Pink Floyd to record their first new material in 28 years - a protest song against the Ukraine war.

The song, Hey Hey, Rise Up!, features the original Pink Floyd pair alongside long-time Floyd bassist Guy Pratt and Nitin Sawhney on keyboards.

Gilmour said he called Mason, who lives with his wife Annette at Middlewick House, Corsham, to urge that they reformed Pink Floyd in order to send a message of support to Ukrainians in their battle against the Russian invasion.

Gilmour told The Guardian: “I rang Nick up and said: ‘listen, I want to do this thing for Ukraine. I’d be really happy if you played on it and I’d also be really happy if you’d agree to us putting it out as Pink Floyd.’ And he was absolutely on for that.”

He added: “It’s Pink Floyd if it’s me and Nick, and that is the biggest promotional vehicle; that is the platform that I’ve been working on for my whole adult life, since I was 21.

“I wouldn’t do this with many more things, but it’s so vitally, vitally important that people understand what’s going on there and do everything within their power to change that situation.

“And the thought, also, that mine and Pink Floyd’s support of the Ukrainians could help boost morale in those areas: they need to know the whole world supports them.”

The song is built around a spine-tingling refrain from Ukrainian singer Andriy Khlyvnyuk of the band Boombox.

Gilmour says the song is a show of "anger at a superpower invading a peaceful nation". But it is also intended as a morale booster for the people of Ukraine, and a call "for peace".

Work on the song began a couple of weeks ago, when Gilmour was shown Khlyvnyuk's Instagram feed. The singer had posted footage of himself in Kyiv's Sofiyskaya Square, fully armed and ready to fight the Russian invasion.

Facing the camera, Khlyvnyuk sang The Red Viburnum In The Meadow, a protest song written during the First World War, which has become a rallying cry in Ukraine over last six weeks.

"It just struck me that, as it is a capella, one could turn this into a beautiful song," Gilmour told BBC 6 Music's Matt Everitt.

The song was released on Friday, April 8, with proceeds going to humanitarian relief. You can hear it on YouTube at youtube.com/watch?v=saEpkcVi1d4