Introducing Sondre Lerche, Last week we had Magnet from Bergen this week we have Sondre, Bergen is also home to Royksopp & Kings of Convenience. Sondres musical story starts with him at a very young age, a strong fascination with bands such as native heroes A-HA steered him further into the world of music, by the age of eight he started to take guitar lessons and continued his fascination of the instrument in his own time exploring the use of different chords & melodies.

At the age of 14 Sondre wrote his first "proper" song, his sister was the first person who caught onto his talent and arranged for Sondre to play at the bar she worked at on some Acoustic nights. H.P Gundersen a Bergen producer was quick to snap the young talent up. The pair established a close relationship Gundersen introduced Sondre to a very different array of music than the kind he was used to listening to. Sondre refers to Burt Bacharach, Jeff Buckley, High Llamas, Elvis Castello, Steely Dan, Beck and Cole Porter as his most important sources of inspiration.

Virgin Records was quick to sign Sondre up in 2000 and they granted the young talent total artistic freedom, very unusual for someone so young. Sondre completed his first album back in Christmas 2000 but held off the release date until he had finished his A Levels. Faces Down is the title, Sleep On Needles is the first commercial single to be released in the UK.

Sondre writes very harmonic acoustic pop music, Sleep on Needles is due for release on the 14th of October 2002, and is an unusual mixture of a Beck(like) vocals over a song you could imagine Badly Drawn Boy writing. At this point we must hand it to Sondre his writing must be admired especially as he is writing in his second language. The single also includes quite a nice quirky live version of the song.

Sondre Live Dates with Gemma Hayes.
October 2002
2nd - London, ULU
3rd - Cambridge, Junction
4th - Brighton, Corn Exchange
6th - Portsmouth - Wedgewood rooms