DUNE (1993)
A solid debut album, very 80s goth
favorite song(s): Taste of Love, As if in a dream
least favorite song: 失われた眺め
L'histoire
L'Arc⁓en⁓Ciel (jp: ラルク アン シエル; abbr. L'Arc, ラルク) is a rock band that formed in 1991 in Osaka, Japan. The original lineup consisted of tetsu (bass), hyde (vocals), ken (guitar), and sakura (drums). A real L'Arc superfreak might say "this is hiro and pero erasure" but nobody knows who they are.
L'Arc put out four albums in this configuration—DUNE (1993), Tierra (1994), heavenly (1995), and True (1996). They're all pretty good and L'Arc unsurprisingly grew to be popular.
Unfortunately, sakura got busted for drug possession which hurt the band's reputation, so he left. They did some club shows under different names, but still promoted as L'Arc⁓en⁓Ciel for a few months as a three-piece. Soon, yukihiro replaced sakura and L'Arc put out the beautiful j-pop masterpiece of an album, HEART.
They blew the fuck up, peaking in popularity in 1999 when they simultaneously released banger albums, ark and ray. L'Arc sold millions of singles and albums and played massive shows with hundreds of thousands of attendees. The comparatively experimental REAL followed in 2000. The music videos (often referred to as PVs, or promotional videos in Japan) for those singles—LOVE FLIES, NEO UNIVERSE, and STAY AWAY—were notably weird. You'd think they were experimenting with the devil's lettuce if it wasn't extremely illegal in Japan. ken and hyde both injured their ribs in a go-kart accident (citation needed) and wore iconic, cunty corsets for support during their REALIVE concerts—so iconic, ken brought his fit back for their 15th anniversary concert in 2006.
In 2001, L'Arc went on their first hiatus to go solo. hyde released music as HYDE, tetsu as tetsu69, ken formed SONS OF ALL PUSSYS with sakura, and yukihiro formed acid android.
L'Arc reconvened in 2004 and released SMILE, which contained Fullmetal Alchemist theme song READY STEADY GO which is what I cite when people say they've never heard of L'Arc⁓en⁓Ciel, usually met with an "ohhh." There was a big, but largely unsuccessful, push to market Japanese music in the States in the early '00s. L'Arc played at the anime convention Otakon in August 2004 and released SMILE through the now-defunct American Sony Music subsidiary Tofu Records. L'Arc released another absolute banger album AWAKE in 2005 and promptly went on hiatus again. In 2007, L'Arc was back at it with the disjointed KISS—an album on which half the songs were recorded while hyde had lingual braces and you can absolutely hear the difference in his pronunciation. L'Arc went on hiatus again until their 20th anniversary in 2011. They released BUTTERFLY in 2012 and embarked on a "world" tour (without fact-checking, I'm pretty sure this was a few European cities, a few Asian cities, New York, and Hawaii). From 2012 to the present, the members have been primarily active as soloists or in other bands, putting out a few singles and occasionally performing together as a band in Japan.
discography
(Hover for a quick review)
Personal history
I was introduced to L'Arc through a show on the now-defunct International Channel called PopJapan.tv in early November 2004. L'Arc was one of the only rock bands featured. In their interview clips, they gave bizarre responses, two of them were wearing sunglasses in a dimly lit room, and they didn't seem at all like they wanted to be there, which was intriguing and relatable to me. I pretty quickly developed a crush on hyde and became pretty insufferable about him for a few years.
I've managed to collect almost all of their albums as well as a few singles, and still have some random pieces of merch in my possession (mostly stationary circa '98-'99). I attended their 2012 concert at Madison Square Garden, which was incredible. I can be seen pretty clearly during My Heart Draws a Dream in the live broadcast on WOWOW/DVD footage, as well as in the WORLD TOUR FINAL pamphlet.