Soap&Skin

Piano, violin, electronics

Soap&Skin is the project of Anja Franziska Plaschg, born April 5, 1990; German Wikipedia places her birth in Gnas, Styria, and English Wikipedia in Poppendorf. She began piano at six and violin at 14, then electronic music; she attended the Ortweinschule graphic-design school in Graz, left at 16 for Vienna, and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in Daniel Richter's master class, leaving at 18. Influences German Wikipedia names include Xiu Xiu, Cat Power, Bjork, Nico, Aphex Twin, Rachmaninoff and Arvo Part. The STRIKE75 EP (2006) holds the earliest "Mr. Gaunt PT 1000", and in 2008 she played Nico in Werner Fritsch's play Nico - Sphinx aus Eis.

Lovetune for Vacuum (Couch Records/PIAS, March 2009, produced by Plaschg) reached 5 in Austria, won the 2010 European Border Breakers Award and was number 38 on musicOMH's top 50 of 2009; Pitchfork gave it 7.3. Her "Goodbye", co-written with Apparat, was used in Breaking Bad. Narrow (February 10, 2012) went to number 1 in Austria; NME called it claustrophobically intense, with emotional pressure that has focused her artistically. The Sugarbread EP followed in March 2013, then From Gas to Solid / You Are My Friend (October 26, 2018) and the covers album Torso (November 22, 2024). She composed for Romeo und Julia at the Thalia Theater in Hamburg and Antigone at the Burgtheater in Vienna in 2015, acted in Die Getraumten (2016), and played the lead and scored Des Teufels Bad (The Devil's Bath, 2024), winning Austrian Film Awards for best actress and best music.

Her "Me and the Devil" is reported to have gone silver in the UK in 2025, gold in the US and platinum in France in 2026, per German Wikipedia. Setlist.fm lists 157 setlists since 2008, with 2009 the busiest year (41 shows). She has performed with John Cale and Patti Smith and in the Bowie Blackstar project, and received the Grosser Josef-Krainer-Preis in 2025.