Lovetune for Vaccum – the debut album from Austrian teenager Anja Plaschg, aka Soap and Skin – makes you wonder just what was happening on her parents' pig-farm in Gnas in southeastern Austria where she grew up. She talks to JIM CARROLL
ANJA PLASCHG makes music that gets under your skin.
Lovetune for Vaccum
is the Austrian teenager’s debut album, and her highly individual and dramatic take on electronic music produces sounds and songs which will haunt you long after the album fades to a close.
It's a compelling, otherworldly listen. There's a sense of otherness throughout to power the grandeur of Gothronica songs such as Cry Wolfand the cryptic splutters and splatters on DDMMYYYY.
She may be pitching for the ethereal with a barrage of electronic effects, an old-beyond-her-years voice and dramatic scrapes of piano and violin, but Plaschg’s music always succeeds in leading the audience to a deeper, darker place.
It makes you wonder just what the hell was happening on her parents’ pig-farm in Gnas in southeastern Austria where she grew up.
Plaschg says she had a normal childhood, with music featuring quite prominantly. “When I was a child, I remember that I loved Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson and Queen. There was a short time when I was around 11 when I was into rave music, but then, I heard the Sex Pistols, The Clash, Sisters of Mercy, Nirvana and Einstürzende Neubauten. From there, I progressed to classical and experimental music, then electronic and techno.”
These days, it's soundtracks such as Clint Mansell and the Kronos Quartet's score for Darren Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dreamfilm which resonate most with her. Indeed, similar broody tension is a hallmark of her own work.
When she was still investigating music, older siblings provided her with source material without them knowing it. “Sometimes I used to steal CDs from my two brothers’ rooms. They are 10 years older than I am and they obviously had more music.
“In the provinces where I’m from, it just wasn’t easy for me to get or find or discover music other than mainstream stuff. What everyone else was into was not for me. The music I really liked was seen as alien-like and nobody around me could understand why I liked it.”
It was inevitable that Plaschg would start making music herself. “My father sung in the choir of the local Catholic church and played the guitar. He was known for doing a good impersonation of Freddie Mercury.
"I started on piano and violin and was composing pieces from the start which were performed in the music school in my village. The first song I recorded on the computer in my father's office was Cynthia, which is on the album, and I did that when I was 14. The electronic experiments started at the same time. The software I was using then is the same as I use now for programming, sampling, recording, mixing and playing live.
"I recorded Mr. Gaunt PT 1000then and parts of Marche Funebre, Cry Wolfand Turbine Womb. I wrote and recorded for nearly four years without ever thinking about releasing an album."
Plaschg was still in school when she started to get interest from record labels. "In 2006, I send out a demo to four small labels. One of those labels was Shitkatapult in Berlin because I was very into the old electronic and ambient work of T. Raumschmiere, who founded the label. They heard it and found out about me and put Mr. Gaunt PT 1000on an EP."
By the end of 2006, Plaschg had moved to Vienna to study at the Academy of Fine Arts under the artist Daniel Richter, but she was still compulsively recording music. There may have been the odd couple of diversions in the meantime – since dropping out of college, for instance, she’s played the role of German singer Nico in a play which was staged in Berlin and Vienna last year – but music remains her priority.
“Recording for me is about creating a balance and an identity – which I’m always searching for when I make music,” Plaschg says. “I’ve always had an impulsive urge to convey my feelings with my music.
“I am deeply into mechanical, synthetic and cosmic sounds and beats so when you go to express emotional and subliminal experiences with electronic music, there is always distance and coldness. I think it would have been very wrong if I’d tried to make this album in purely acoustic ways.”
Soap&Skin plays the opening show of this year’s DEAF festival at Crawdaddy, Dublin on October 22. Lovetune for Vaccum is out now on Couch Records. www.myspace.com/soapandskin
