His debut EP Taking Flight drops April 30th on Eastcote Recordings — and the biography behind these four tracks is hard to make up. A Norwegian raised in a musical family, Clements enlisted in the army first, spending his nights picking apart melodies on a broken-down piano inside a chapel beyond the Arctic Circle. Then came Stockholm and sessions with members of Kent, then London, a connection with Tord Knudsen of The Wombats, and recording at the storied Eastcote Studios, where Arctic Monkeys, Massive Attack, and Adele had played before him.

The production roster on the EP signals serious intent: Catherine Marks (boygenius, Ed O’Brien), Martin Terefe (Yungblud), Knudsen himself. The sound is live, studio-raw, driven by taut basslines and guitar solos that pull toward the eighties, while the lyrics hold a balance between euphoria and the anxious charge of nightlife. We spoke with Filip about how military service turned into musical obsession, why he left Scandinavia for London, and what happens when a rock instinct collides with a pop sensibility in the same room.

photo by Kevin Lynch

Filip, hey, good to see you. Your debut EP drops April 30th. You could have put it out quietly — straight to streaming, no label. Instead, you went with Eastcote Recordings, Grammy-winning producers, a proper release date. Why was it important for you to frame it this way — with weight, with an event behind it? What does the formality of a release give you in a world where anyone can upload a track to DistroKid in twenty minutes?

Hey – great to be here, thanks for having me. It feels like it takes an army to lift a project now. You can upload a track in twenty minutes, but building something that actually reaches people is a different thing entirely. Working with Eastcote and the wider team gave the project weight – not just in terms of reach, but in terms of belief. When you’re surrounded by people you trust, who genuinely care about the music, it creates momentum. There’s also accountability in that. You want to deliver. You don’t want to let people down. That shared belief makes it feel like more than just a release – it becomes a moment.

You’ve got a packed run of shows coming up at legendary London venues — The Troubadour, The Half Moon, Dublin Castle. These are rooms that hold a hundred, maybe two hundred people, where the crowd is standing right up against you. Then in August — Parken Festival in Norway, where the scale is completely different. When you put those two realities side by side — the intimate room and the festival field — which version of yourself do you consider the real one?

That’s a great question. I think the aim is to bring the same honesty into both settings. Whether it’s a hundred people in a room or a field at a festival, the job is the same – to connect and to share the songs properly. If that comes across, then it’s the same version of me in both places – just on a different scale.

You enlisted in the army as a teenager. There are decisions people make away from something, and decisions they make toward something. You’re eighteen, you’re above the Arctic Circle, you’re freezing. Tell me — what exactly were you trying to build out of yourself at that point, and do you see that person in the one we hear on Taking Flight?

In your teens you’re trying to figure out who you are. For me, that meant testing myself – pushing physical and mental limits and seeing what was there. Looking back, I think I was searching for a sense of identity and trying to carve my own path. You learn a lot in those environments – especially about resilience. I definitely became more stubborn, in a good way. Taking Flight is more of a romantic journey, but I think that same intensity and drive still runs through it.

You worked with Catherine Marks and Martin Terefe — people who are used to pushing sound to a certain standard. You’ve got four tracks on this debut EP. Was there a moment when a producer suggested making a song better, and you realized that “better” would destroy the very thing you wrote it for? How do you even react to something like that — do you get pressed, or do you go along with it?

Honestly, there’s been very little friction in the process of making this EP. Catherine and Martin are incredible producers, and they pushed things in a way that always felt constructive. For me, it’s never about resisting or just going along with something. It’s about understanding why a change is being suggested. If it serves the song, I’m open to it – but if it takes away from the core of it, then I’ll protect that.

You moved to London in 2022. A city that feeds artists with energy on one hand and grinds them down with rent and loneliness on the other. Taking Flight sounds charged up and optimistic. I’m curious — where does the dark side of that move hide? Does it live somewhere inside the songs, or did you deliberately leave it outside the frame of this EP?

I think the darker side is in there – just not always on the surface. Moving to London is intense. It gives you energy and momentum, but it also tests you. There’s loneliness, and there’s that outsider feeling that comes with starting over somewhere new. Songs like Taking Flight lean into the sense of possibility – the lift. But tracks like Typhoon go more directly at that isolation, and Right Place Wrong Time sits somewhere in between. So the tension and uncertainty are always there – just expressed in different ways. It’s all part of the same story.

In May you’re playing The Troubadour — a place where Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, and Joni Mitchell once performed. Do you think about things like that when you walk on stage? Or does it get in the way, and you’d rather forget whose sweat soaked into those walls before you?

It’s something I think about before and after – not so much in the moment. When you’re about to go on stage, you’re locked in. You have to be present. If you start thinking about who played there before you, it can actually get in the way. The history is amazing, of course – but the focus has to be on making your own moment for the people who showed up.

Your partnership with Tord Knudsen from The Wombats — that’s two people coming from completely different musical temperatures. He’s indie pop, you’re rock with heavy edges. Here’s the question: when you argue about a song — who turns out to be right more often in hindsight, once the track is finished?

Tord’s great – and we actually have very similar taste, which helps a lot. We’re usually pretty in sync, and when we’re not, that’s where it gets interesting. We balance each other out. It’s less about one of us being “right” and more about landing somewhere better than either of us would’ve on our own. That’s what makes it a strong partnership.

Taking Flight is four tracks. Was that a deliberate discipline, or did you have more material and some of it just had to be cut? Walk me through what the selection process looked like — what principle got a song onto the EP, and what sent it to the drawer?

We wrote a lot more than four tracks – Tord and I alone probably did 60-70, and another 10 or so with the wider team. It was definitely a deliberate decision to keep it focused. In the end it came down to instinct – mine and the people around me I trust. You just feel which songs belong together. It’s not about the “best” songs, it’s about the ones that create a world. Once that clicked, the EP fell into place.

You’re Scandinavian, you live in London, you’re recording on a British label, you grew up on The Killers and Bowie, and in August you’re heading back to Norway to play Parken Festival. Who are you writing for? Do you think in terms of geography at all, or is your listener an abstract person with headphones on?

I don’t think in terms of geography. It always starts with something personal – I have to believe in it first, the same way I connected to the music I grew up with. If it’s honest and it connects, it can travel. That’s the goal – to create something that reaches someone, wherever they are.

The EP comes out in a week. Are you going to listen to it on April 30th, when it goes public? Tell me where your head is right now — in the promo cycle for Taking Flight, or in the studio working on whatever comes next.

I’ll definitely check it when it goes live – it feels like a bit of a “seal the deal” moment. I’m really proud of the EP, but my head’s already quite forward-facing. We’ve started getting some great support at radio, and we’re announcing a run of shows and festivals soon, which is exciting. It feels like the beginning of things opening up around the music – and there’s more on the way.

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