Soap&Skin

"Haunting paino and breathtaking vocals"

The first time I heard about Soap&Skin, it was the weird shampoobrand-like name that caught my eye. I expected soft, light music just like the sweetness and softness of soap. Boy was I wrong, Instead Lovetune for Vacuum features pretty, fragile and heavy songs about the downside of life. But don't get too depressed, yet, because the haunting piano, her emotional and fragile voice are essential and breathtaking in the selfcomposed, sublime songs.

Soap&Skin is also known as Anja Plaschg. The sheer force this young artist (she is only eighteen) injects into her compositions almost beggars belief, her songs consuming every last drop of her with no regard for grace or beauty. They say I'm different – and they have been saying it about Plaschg since she was a little girl in the small South Steiermark village of Gnas, where her parents had a pigfarm. With her punkish looks, ripped clothes and nihilistic attitude to match, she felt like the archetypal outsider, hating piano lessons until hitting her teens when, all of a sudden, piano playing became her elixir. Anja began practising for 12 hours a day, took up the violin as well and composed her first classical pieces for the village music school. Her older brother installed a sound programme on the computer for her to play around with, and having figured it out for herself, she experimented with productions. Soap&Skin's first album “Lovetune for Vacuum” is a logical progression from her previously released pieces, an unwavering line of drama, inner conflict and melancholy. The impact of this debut lies in its paradoxicality: remarkably mature on the one hand, yet feeding on unbridled youthful exuberance on the other. The songs you find on the album have been written between 2005 – 2008 and have been recorded back at Anja’s place - mostly just by herself.

@ Vienna, Austria
♫ Alternative, Folk
♥ The Sun (mp3)
▸ Myspace
▸ Official Website