At long last, we have details of the new Bryan Ferry studio album, "Olympia", which is to be released on October 25th, and includes musical contributions from the likes of Nile Rodgers, Groove Armada, Scissor Sisters, Flea, Jonny Greenwood, and David Gilmour. It also sees Bryan reunited on record with members of Roxy Music, including Brian Eno.

Named after the area of London where his studio is situated, "Olympia" comes in four different editions, as detailed below (along with ordering details). It should prove very popular, as it is the first album to reunite Bryan Ferry with Phil Manzanera, Andy Mackay and Brian Eno since Roxy Music's seminal album "For Your Pleasure" in 1973.

For The Love of Vinyl, a celebration of the acclaimed design work of Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell as commissioned by renowned musicians and bands of 1970's such as Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Genesis, Black Sabbath, Yes, UFO, Peter Gabriel and 10cc, is the subject of an exhibition now running at Gallery@oxo on London's River Thames.

The free exhibition, running until July 25th, 2010 from 11am to 6pm daily, is a wonderful look at a range of iconic vinyl covers, a companion event to the superb book "For the Love of Vinyl" - the first book to document Hipgnosis output in detail, focusing on over 60 package designs – from cover to label – written about in entertaining detail by the men who created them. Also included in the book are short essays by musicians (such as Pink Floyd's Nick Mason), artists (Peter Blake) and fellow designers (Paula Scher) on their favourite covers.

The pictures especially chosen for this exhibition represent some of Hipgnosis' best known work from the 1960's, '70s and '80s. We were at the launch evening (which showed off the new "Liquid Dark Side Of The Moon" image to the left) and the exclusive pictures which follow give an idea what visitors will see...

[STORY UPDATED] Something rather unexpected happened last night: in a bolt out of the blue, David Gilmour and Roger Waters performed together for the Hoping Foundation Benefit Evening! Guy Pratt performed bass duties whilst Roger was on acoustic guitar, with Roger playing bass at other points during the evening's performance. For those of you surprised by Guy's inclusion, some of you will recall from our Guy Pratt interview back in 2005, Guy was asked to play bass for Pink Floyd at Live8 when the reunion happened...

We now know that the show took place - not in London, as noted by Getty Images - but at the rather splendid Kiddington Hall, in Oxfordshire.

News of the show, and the appearance by David and Roger, was broken by one of the hosts of the evening, TV presenter Fearne Cotton, who tweeted about the event in the early hours of this morning. There's a number of pictures from the performance, and the evening itself, over at Getty Images, and if you click the thumbnail to the right, you'll go directly to them.

This evening, more details emerged courtesy of David's blog - the tracks performed were: To Know Him Is To Love Him, Wish You Were Here, Comfortably Numb, and Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)...

The band consisted of David, Roger, Guy Pratt (bass and acoustic guitar), Harry Waters (keyboards), Andy Newmark (drums), Chester Kamen (guitar) and Jonjo Grisdale (keyboards). Quite a line-up, who performed in front of 200 very lucky people, raising some £350,000 for the Hoping Foundation (Hope and Optimism for Palestinians In the Next Generation) in the process.

This coming Tuesday, July 13th, a special night for the benefit of the Syd Barrett Fund will be held at London's 93 Feet East. The "Interstellar" event features Skinbat Scramble, All Schools Are Strange and the great Department S (huge Barrett fans, reforming since splitting in 1982), plus DJ sets from Spencer Rocks, and is part of the Syd Barrett Fund's activity to mark forty years since Syd’s debut solo album was released, and follows a gig at the Tunbridge Wells Forum in June and a charity walk from London to Cambridge over Easter.

Event organizer Simon Webb says of the line up: "All three bands have existed in one form or another since the late seventies or early eighties, with differing success levels along the way. All three now have the enjoyment of simply playing in front of an audience as their main goal in music, something which is very important for an event in the spirit of Syd Barrett, since it was the fun Syd got from music which was most important to him, rather than any success, fame or acclaim."

Tickets are £5, and can be bought from WeGotTickets.com, as well as on the night. For more on the Syd Barrett Fund visit www.interstellar.org.uk.