Soap&Skin

Soap&Skin has, in just a few years, won over critics and audiences alike for her unique voice and for an approach to songwriting that borders on the most extreme intimism. She's a pure and genuine musician, with no masks or filters, pouring her soul into her writing completely. Her music carries the essence of a Pina Bausch dance move, a Käthe Kollwitz painting, a Francesca Woodman photograph. It reflects any art form that grapples with inner torment, anguish, violence — but, like the artists mentioned above, in a distinctly feminine way.

Soap&Skin is the stage name of Austrian musician and producer Anja Plaschg, born in 1990.

Raised on a farm in the Austrian countryside, Anja began studying piano and violin at a young age, which led her to move to Vienna to continue her studies at the Academy of Fine Arts. With her debut album, preceded by a four-track EP, "Lovetune For Vacuum" (2009), Plaschg immediately showcased her astonishing talent as a songwriter and producer. The record reflects the artist's fragile spirit, set to music and giving melody to her inner torment, her anguish, and her evolution and growth from girl to woman.

The themes of "Lovetune For Vacuum" are picked up again on her second album, "Narrow", in 2012, but they're also sharpened by the loss of her father in 2009. "Narrow" spawned the single "Voyage, Voyage", a cover of French artist Desireless, used in the soundtrack of the Austrian film "Stilleben", in which Anja makes her debut as an actress.

In 2011 she recorded the track "Goodbye" in collaboration with electronic musician Apparat, which was first used in the final episode of the fourth season of the iconic TV series "Breaking Bad" and later as the opening theme of "Dark", the acclaimed German Netflix series.

Six years after her last studio effort, Soap&Skin returned in 2018 with her third album "From Gas To Solid/You Are My Friend". The record arrives after a period away from the music scene for the Austrian artist, which perhaps explains why she's involved in every aspect of its creation: "From Gas To Solid/You Are My Friend" is played entirely by Anja herself. It's a decidedly more relaxed album by her standards, born within the walls of home and the fruit of a newfound serenity that came with motherhood. And the title, "From Gas To Solid/You Are My Friend", captures the essence of a broadened outlook, no longer turned purely inward but expanded into sweeping existential reflections on the world and on matter itself. Still, it's a successful album, one that reveals several more "hidden" sides of the Austrian singer-songwriter.

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