Flight Mode

The debut EP from this reverential emo band is full of nostalgia, wonder, and autobiographical detail - Pitchfork

 It’s melodic, delicate and intensely evocative, teeming with vague memories just strong enough to make you feel the heat of the moment. Lyseid sings of a period when he was fueled by cassette tapes, Spark Notes, basement shows, late-night drives and, most prominently, hope. Listening to TX ‘98 is like reading a feel-good, well-written memoir, one where even a description of the wallpaper warms your heart. - Paste

"Fossil Fuel" featured on NPR's New Music Friday Playlists

 Oslo Trio Flight Mode Expertly Captures ‘90s Emo Nostalgia With “Sixteen”
Generally soft and somber, a little jangly and droney, yet with plenty of energy and emotion - Interview on Aversionline

The grass trimmer cutting down the weeds accidentally snags one rose in the flower bed. - Small Albums

A vat full of heavy water spills out on a golden garden and the plants get scalded and hydrated all at once. - Small Albums

Flight Mode (members of The Little Hands of Asphalt, Dråpe and Youth Pictures of Florence Henderson) will release TX, '98 on June 25 via Sound As Language, and it'll include the shambolic emo/indie of "Fossil Fuel." - Brooklyn Vegan

Flight Mode’s debut single, “Fossil Fuel,” is one of the best emo songs of 2021. It’s bright and summery, only a step or two away from Oso Oso’s Yunahon Mixtape and, like that album, does an excellent job sounding both classic and fresh. It’s a great first taste of the Oslo, Norway, group’s debut EP TX ‘98. - The Alternative

...given the pedigree of their connections it’s no surprise that their new track ‘Sixteen’ makes such an impression, a blur of indie guitar noise and catchy melodies, all packed in exactly 3 mins 30 seconds. - Nordic Music Review

There are tons of bands looking back at the emo days, some reimagining, some just trying to pull it off the best they can. For me, Oslo’s Flight Mode are one of the few who seem to pull it off with actual sincerity. - Austin Town Hall

Five years later. I still have my quarrels with nostalgia. But I'm en route to somewhere, and I'm moving backwards as I'm moving forward. Torshov is a borough in Oslo, Norway where I shared an apartment with some friends throughout most of my twenties. In 2005 I turned 24.

So why 2005, and why Torshov? It could have been any year. It could have been anywhere. I could have been anyone. I'm not being nostalgic, I'm just trying to remember it. And remember me.

It's the year full of realizations, but no epiphanies. The year when the wide-eyed arrogance of your early twenties is beginning to fade. When you cross the excuse for a river in this peripheral city every Tuesday, to go stand behind the counter at a chain record store. When you've just released your first EP with your indie rock band, meticulously scissoring each and every jewel case inlay. When you thought it was a good idea to go down to said river with your Jazzmaster for a band photo. When that photo, along with the CDs that will no longer play, is the only real document you were able to find from that year, and everything else is a haze of auditoriums, alcohol and neverlasting love. Because it's a year of limbo, a leap year in every sense but the literal, everything digitized but not yet stored in the virtual cloud. So all your memories are now virtually floating somewhere in the literal clouds with no strings tying them down.

And you're trying to reconstruct, just to realize you weren't really there, that you were someone else, and that someone else is forever lost in the fragility of the time that passed. Then, you think if you can just catch it fast enough, with enough immediacy, it might just ring true, you might be there. But again, you see it's all pure construction rather than reconstruction. But at least this is how I remember it.

I also remember, if I somewhat embarrassedly admit it, that Death Cab for Cutie was probably my favorite band back in '05 – although the burgeoning indie elitist in me was skeptical of (but secretly loving) Transatlanticism and outright dismissive of the newly released Plans. However, when Death Cab expat Chris Walla stumbled into my sphere right on the tail end of recording this EP, I knew he had to be involved in some capacity. He has mixed two of the songs in Hall of Justice. It just seems too fitting. Just like the fact that 24 is exactly 2.42 long (or should I say short). Otherwise, the EP was recorded, and mostly written, over four days in June, just like the last one. June 24th - 27th to be specific.

- Sjur Lyseid