Nagasaki Swim is the recording project of Rotterdam-based songwriter and producer Jasper Boogaard. The band’s new track “Eternal” – the first glimpse of upcoming second album Everything Grows – summons similarly warm, unpretentious folk meanderings as spiritual kin Lomelda, LVL UP and Field Medic. Which makes sense, given that Boogaard cut his teeth as an engineer at Philadelphia’s Headroom Studios, where the likes of Alex G and Hop Along have recorded in the past.
“Eternal” is a poignant, soft-spoken track adorned by Marty Gottlieb-Hollis’ striking trumpet flourishes. It was written in direct aftermath of reading the “devastating” IPCC Report of 2021, which delineates the extent of humanity’s influence on nature. As just a single human being, your part in the grand scheme of things can feel small and insignificant, to a point where inertia becomes the only way to alleviate and process it all. In the beautifully-shot music video, Boogaard attempts to escape from this very feeling, wandering the woods in a quest reestablish his own connection to the natural world. Only to end up setting up a makeshift room in the middle of the forest with an Oculus Rift; reaching for habitual comforts as a plastic globe sits opposite a wilting house plant.
“‘This track was written a week before we went into the Katzwijm Studio to record Everything Grows,” says Boogaard. “The IPCC report was just released and had occupied my head at the time. This song is an ode to using nature as an escape, while realising you can’t escape from climate change because nature is the thing that’s at stake. This paradox forms the base for this song.”
Everything Grows – which is slated for release via Excelsior Recordings sometime next year – is the follow-up of Nagasaki Swim’s excellent debut The Mirror. Check out the video for “Eternal” below and find it on streaming outlets.
