Blog: LOFT965

Still a teenager, Austrian vocalist and pianist Anja Plaschg debuted her project Soap And Skin on  Lovetune For Vacuum  (PIAS, 2009). These piano lieder mainly exploit the melodramatic skills of the vocalist, capable of alternating ecstatic melisma and whispered laments. Consequently the mood ranges from the solemn, philosophical  Sleep  to the childish, bouncing  Spiracle . The accordion-driven elegy  Cry Wolf , however, achieves an otherworldly quality. She is at her most virile in the lugubrious  Thanatos . She is at her most sentimental in the tender lullaby  Extinguish Me  (with a piano melody reminiscent of Beethoven's Pathetique ) and in [...]