Laputa

Laputa was a Japanese Nagoya kei rock band, active from 1993 to 2004. The band chose its name from the flying island in Gulliver's Travels and tried to portray a similar unrealistic view of the world with their performance. Their 1997 album Emadara was named one of the top albums from 1989 to 1998 in a 2004 issue of the music magazine Band Yarouze. History Laputa was formed in July 1993 by aki and Tomoi, high school friends who were previously in the band Ai SICK FACE together. Laputa recorded their two demos "Saddist no Yume" and "Naraku no Soko"(Okazaki Yukito from Eternal Elysium worked as an engineer.) in later 1993. They met some success in 1995 in the visual indie scene with their first indie album Memai, and shot a music video for Vertigo. They released a mini-album (Kurumeku Haijin) in 1996, and also released a live video (Hakoniwa) featuring performances from the concert at SHIBUYA ON AIR WEST from the Paradoxical Reality TOUR IV. With their increasing popularity in the visual indie scene, Laputa caught the attention of big record companies and signed to the major label Toshiba-EMI in August 1996. Laputa released their first major single GARASU NO SHOUZOU in September 1996, which peaked at #34 on the Oricon singles chart. In October Laputa's first major album KAGEROU was released. Laputa released 4 more albums and several videos in the following 4 years. In 2000, Laputa released a collection of their B-sides (c/w songs) "Coupling Collection + xxxk [1996-1999 singles]". They also released a three-disc best-of album "3DISC BEST ~1995-1999 except Coupling Collection~", which featured 32 songs in all including Laputa's eight major singles and 24 other songs. After these releases, Laputa left Toshiba-EMI and signed to a smaller major label Nippon-Crown.