Eri Nobuchika(信近エリ)'s professional career started at Sony Music SD “Gonna be a star” audition, a regularly held event for aspiring new pop artists. She sent in her demotape, but forgot to put her address in it. The president of the audition wanted to contact her, and after a few calls to Fukuokan post offices, asking after a girl called “Nobuchika Eri”, he finally got hold of Eri. At the audition, she didn’t raise many eyebrows, but did raise one particular pair, those of Shinichi Osawa, aka Mondo Grosso. She got 7 more label offers, but ultimately signed with Sony Music, and teamed up with Shinichi Osawa. After finishing high school, aged 19, she started work on her debut single, “Lights”, which was produced by Shinichi Osawa (as are all of Eri’s songs), and was released in the spring of 2004. It starred as the themesong of the Japanese film “ 深紅 " (English title: “The Deep Red”). The song was also featured on Q Entertainment’s Playstation Portable game “Lumines”, along with the B-track “I hear the music in my soul”. Many overseas fans discovered Eri through the game (which was a huge success with 500 000 units sold in Europe and the US ) and it also helped launch her career in Japan . In 2006, Lights became the ending theme to the Anime, FLAG. Months later, the second single, “Voice” was released. It was a song that was totally different from “Lights”, in which Shinichi Osawa’s club/underground background is more apparent. Although Sony Music expected much of the song, it relatively flopped, only barely making the top 100 at Oricon ( Japan ’s leading pop chart), at #94 for 3 weeks. In June 2005, “Sketch for Summer” was released, yet again, a very different genre compared to the previous singles. It was a mellow ballad with some hints of jazz. In the PV, she’s featured in colour for the first time, as all of her videos are black & white. The single scored even worse, #175 at Oricon, for just one week. ”Kodou” (English: “Heartbeat”) was released December 7 th, 2005 , closely followed by Eri’s debut album “nobuchikaeri”, on December 21 st, 2005 . Her latest release is the DVD single “Yume no Kakera”, animated by Studio 4C (“The Animatrix”), which came out March 1st, 2006. On the personal side, Eri Nobuchika seems to be a very nice, friendly and hardworking artist. She was featured in the bi-weekly vodcast "Swallow Tail Radio" (hosted by Sony Music Japan) in which she talked about her career, releases, and where she also addresses messages from fans. She also has a personal blog, which she updates regularly.