Anja Franziska Plaschg is the person who hides behind the pseudonym of Soap&Skin. She is a young Austrian singer-songwriter that we learned to appreciate over the past ten years, even at uneven times. She debuted in 2009, being only eighteen, with Lovetune For Vacuum, a highly characterizing album that immediately turned her into one of the most interesting names within the chamber/darkwave/art-pop party in Europe. A few years later (in 2012), she stressed what a well-calibrated artist she is with the strongly peculiar writing of Narrow. Here the irreplaceable presence of the piano works even better with the semi-industrial and electronic sounds that we encountered on the previous work, thus bringing to light songs that are extra-rich in content and perfectly aligned with her production line.
Six years later, Soap&Skin is finally back with a new album: From Gas to Solid / You Are My Friend (Play It Again Sam, 2018). It won’t take much to realize how, despite the mood being quite the same, the fibers and the texture of this last work are very different from the others. If in Lovetune For Vacuum and Narrow the overflowing desperation of a sensitive soul tormented by the perplexities of life was declared both in music and in words, Plaschg seems to have solved the inner and (above all) individual storms inside this new album – so that she could talk about the journey from the “inside” to the “outside”, from the self to the community, from gas to solid.
I called her on Skype a few days ago to talk about this project. She chose not to show herself, so I had to come to terms with my pixeled awkward expressions as I tried to investigate all across the black screen the reasons for such a delicate and perhaps a little withheld album.
My first question would be about the very beginning: the title. ‘From gas to solid’: from which gas to which solid? What is solid for you now?
I thought it was a good description of the process of bringing something from unconscious to conscious. It’s almost like giving birth to something that was going on in your mind only. It’s been such a long time since I talked about this topic last… What are your thoughts on the title?
My thoughts? Well, I didn’t expect this! I thought it was about being somewhere, you don’t know exactly where, maybe in a kind of “gas situation” where you float and you float and then you become something.
Yeah, that’s very good. It’s a very exact description of what was this process about.
Do you have solid in your life now?
Well, in the beginning, when I started to write this album, I was going through a chaotic and dark episode in my life, but what came soon after that really helped me to put things together and to go on. So, yes.
And what about the second part of the title, ‘You are my friend’? Who is your friend? Is it just the one who listens or is there more?
Yes, it is indeed the one who listens. Also ‘From gas to solid’ wasn’t enough for me to describe the process. I wanted to appreciate it and to call it “my friend”.
In the videos from your singles, ‘Italy’ and ‘Heal’, the image of sharp, broken rocks with water within seems to play a central role: what is the meaning of this image? If there is any…
There is always a meaning. I have to say, I love to work with symbols and symbolism and everything for me, from the moment I wake up, has a particular meaning. It was also very important for me to have water in the artwork because it is the source of life and also it has a female character.
And what about the rocks?
They’re the opposite of water.
I believe you use a very concrete language to talk about both your inner world and the external one: how would you describe the relationship between your words, your music, and the material or natural world around?
I don’t really think about it. What I know is that my words are… Well, I always try to continue what I can’t say in words with music and instrumentation. I think I have a lot more to tell there than with words.
How do you make music? Where is the meeting point between the solemnity of classical music, which you studied for a long time, and the irregularity or eccentricity of electronic music?
It’s just that the language of classical music doesn’t satisfy me enough. I think it’s quite limited. And I also feel limited all the time when I work with that. This is why in the process of creating music what I try to do is to break those limits with different languages, like electronic music.
If you weren’t able to express yourself with music, what would you do?
Like I said, words and speaking are not really my thing. I am not really gifted in telling stories. It’s so much more pictures in my mind and it is also the reason why the artwork and all the pictures that go with my music are always so important for me.
Soon after ‘Narrow’, you stated you already knew your music was going to be different from that moment on and that some “doors” were going to be opened with your new works: did that happen? Which doors opened?
Yes, true, that’s was I said. I wasn’t really sure if I was ever going to make an album again, I sort of lost it at some point. I just wanted to collect life: I became a mother, I experimented working with theatre, movies, scores… And then something really existential changed my life. I quit some relationships and I had to reorder myself and to refine myself. So that was the point where I knew “This is the time to make a new album”!
I wanted to ask you something specific about some songs from your latest album, starting with the first one, ‘This day’: in the lyrics, you say you wish to see something that «it’s not in the play»: do you feel you are in a kind of play?
Yes, I think we all are, all along with society and politics. It’s all a big play.
You also talk about absolution: do you feel like you need one?
I had one, I gave it to me. It’s already done.
She giggles.
About the third track, ‘Italy’: did you write it exclusively for the movie (‘Sicilian Ghost Story’) or was it already written?
I wrote it for the movie.
Do you feel you have some kind of connection with this country?
Oh, of course! It’s hard to define exactly what it is. I have been there after my father died for two months and it was a very beautiful and intense time for me. Every time I played in Italy it was special, I think the audience there is very special. I feel so close to the people there. Yeah. And also Italy is a very interesting place for what is happening in European politics.
I know I don’t want to get into this.
The track titled ‘Surrounded’ sounds like a highly meditated song, whose core clearly lives within the word “desire”: which desire is that?
It was my decision to give a name to something big that concerns all of us. It’s like a collective desire – or a collective pain.
About the song number six, ‘Creep’: do you feel like one?
After I wrote it, I wasn’t so sure anymore to be wanting to sing that I’m a creep – she giggles again. But in the end, it’s still ok to have it like that, because there were a lot of times when I was actually considered a creep from society, beginning from school…
What is this song really about?
Uhm, I wanted to blur if it’s me or your or her or him. It’s kind of a love song, I think…
It has been said a lot and you said it yourself: you have changed since your previous albums and, as you state in ‘Heal’, now you «have no fear». Still, in the same song, you ask yourself if there is a way to heal from the past and I am now asking you: do we heal in the end?
To be honest, I don’t think I answered the question in the song. Oh, and the «I have no fear» verse it’s sung by my daughter. What I sing here is the fear of being used to be near someone and not being able to be anymore. That it’s an important point for me because it shows the struggle to believe something can change… Maybe repeated, again and again, you start to believe what you said. So the song shows what is it to go through the struggle of hoping to heal from something and just to say what you feel… I don’t know…
It seems to have a lot of meaning for you. Do you think you have healed in the end?
Yes, I think I have healed. And I understood what toxic relationships are.
Why did you choose to make a cover of ‘What a wonderful world’?
I am not sure. Also, when I decided to do it I wasn’t in the mood at all. Like, I wanted to feel the truth of those words, when I just said them or sang them… And it ended up being the only song where I kept the first take singing it.
Do you think that the experience of this “wonderful world” is more of a lonesome experience or a collective one?
That’s a good question. What are collective experiences? Going to a concert and being with people around? Isn’t it a collective experience also always a lonesome experience?
None of us has an answer. How could we?
Do you have any “next steps” planned?
Yes, even though I can’t really talk about it. What I can say is that I hope not to wait another six years to start working on a new record!
The call is off and my feeling from the interview is that Soap&Skin is clearly a different person when compared to the young woman who sang deep despair in her first songs. Still, that precise restlessness doesn’t seem to have left. Even if she is now a grown-up and more of an expert, it still looks like Anja wants to hold on that part of unsolvable doubt that brings her to investigate her self even through different shapes, gas and solid ones.
