Filip Clements found his way to music through an unlikely route. As a teenager, he enlisted in the army, and it was while stationed in the Arctic Circle that something shifted: playing a broken-down piano in a small chapel late at night, he decided music would be his defining pursuit. That moment of clarity, and everything that followed it, including writing sessions with members of Swedish rock institution Kent and a move to London in 2022, is the backstory that makes Taking Flight feel like an arrival rather than a casual first step. This is someone who took the long road to get here, and the debut EP carries the weight of that.
Those resources are considerable. Produced with Grammy Award-winners Catherine Marks, whose credits include boygenius and Ed O’Brien, and Martin Terefe, who has worked with Yungblud and Robbie Williams, alongside Tord Knudsen of The Wombats, the EP was recorded at Eastcote Studios in West London, a room that has hosted everyone from The Pogues and Depeche Mode to Arctic Monkeys and Wolf Alice. The production philosophy leans into that lineage without being captured by it: raw drums, crisp basslines, soaring solos, and a modern clarity that keeps the classic live studio atmosphere from tipping into nostalgia.
The title track opens things with exactly the lift-off its name promises, capturing the anticipation and euphoria of a night that might take you somewhere unexpected. Clements draws on a wide range of reference points, Radiohead, The Police, The Weeknd, Bowie, The Killers, and the opening track wears that breadth comfortably without feeling like a genre exercise. The songwriting is direct without being simple, finding words for a feeling that most people have had and few have described with this much precision.
“Right Place Wrong Time” is where the EP’s production shines most clearly. The 80s-esque bassline that drives the track is the kind of hook that announces itself immediately and sustains itself across the full running time, and the song’s subject, the urge to chase something that might have worked under different circumstances, gives Clements the emotional tension he needs to keep the propulsion from becoming mere energy. Chemistry and chaos and all the wrong moments: it’s a song about choosing feelings over sense, and the production matches the recklessness of that choice.
“Typhoon” brings the EP’s most atmospheric moment, the fear and anticipation in the title carrying through the arrangement. Where the preceding tracks ride forward momentum, this one holds something back, the tension given room to sit. It demonstrates a dynamic range that a four-song debut doesn’t always have space to show, and the contrast it creates in the sequencing makes “Fever Dream” hit harder for following it.
“Fever Dream” closes the EP with desire, illusion, and the blur between fantasy and reality, the FM rock and 2000s indie reference points converging in a track that feels immediately accessible without sacrificing the unease underneath its surface. The brightness is real, but so is the disorientation. Clements has a knack for holding those two things in the same song, which is a skill that takes most songwriters several albums to develop.
The unashamed ambition of Taking Flight is its most defining quality and the thing most worth noting in a landscape where debut EPs frequently manage expectations downward. Clements is not managing expectations. He is setting them high and then meeting them across four tracks, with a debut album, Soft Apocalypse, already scheduled for autumn 2026. Whatever that record turns out to be, this one makes the case for taking it seriously.
Taking Flight is available now via Eastcote Recordings.
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