Ahmed Emad Eldin drawing musical history
1994 was the year Pink Floyd released the album “The Division Bell”, the last of what we have from Pink Floyd’s collection. However, Pink Floyd fans had a pleasant surprise after the band announced that a new album called “The Last River” will be released in 2014.
Pink Floyd already revealed the cover art of the album which shows a man punting across a river of clouds towards the bright glow of the sun. This will only be the second cover which has not been produced by the band’s iconic designer Thorgerson after the debut album in 1967, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. After Storm Thorgerson died in 2013, they had to look for a new designer, and it was Aubrey Powell, Thorgerson’s former colleague in the Hipgnosis design studio, who discovered Ahmed Emad Eldin, the 18-year-old Egyptian digital artist.
He was born in Jeddah, KSA before moving to Cairo, and began experimenting with digital art at the age of 13. “A creative agency working for Pink Floyd contacted me after checking my artworks through the internet as my work has appeared on online galleries on behance.net,” said Ahmed in an interview with The Independent. “Thinking about life and nature and what is beyond the world of charming factors we have never seen is enough to create millions of different amazing feelings,” Ahmed explains, as he talks about his inspiration behind the cover art. “First, I draw a sketch for what is in my mind, then I start to simulate the sketch and the idea with real images, and that’s called photo manipulation”. “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 Powell.
The music used in this album was recorded during the 1993 “Division Bell” sessions. The album will be a tribute to late Pink Floyd member Rick Wright who passed away in 2008 after a fight with cancer.
Leave a Comment