I got picked up from the airport and went straight to the country. HEBA: Did you drive with her in the Land Rover? We worked out of her cabin which is overlooking this beautiful glacial lake. Ultimately it was just in the room, working, constantly checking the different systems and different speakers, making sure sounded good on the expensive hi-fi speakers, on the smallest radio, in the car… MARTA SALOGNI: There was such good communication between everyone. She always says, 'I don't want to be the backseat driver.' She's great about finding what people are good at, and collaborating with them in a very fruitful way. There was no point in the process where I felt like a hired gun. She likes the people around her to be really good friends, people who she likes to hang out with, and collaborators. HEBA KADRY: Björk’s team is really small. Tell me a little about working on Utopia. Below, read our conversation about Utopia's inspiring themes, industry sexism, and riding in cars with Björk. Collaborating with Björk was a one-of-a-kind experience, they said, but to be on a team with mostly women, working on such a transcendent, feminist record - that was something closer to groundbreaking. It was clear that the process of making Utopia was incredibly meaningful for all three of them. Utopia’s third engineer was Mandy Parnell, the founder of Black Saloon Studios, who has worked with Björk previously, as well as The xx and The Knife and Brian Eno she answered questions over email. Heba, who’d phoned in from her Bushwick studio, got involved with Utopia through Tri Angle Records’s Robin Carolan, who introduced her to Björk.

We were also on the call with Heba Kadry - a mastering engineer who has worked on records from the likes of AUSTRA, (Sandy) Alex G, and Rabit. “Obviously I said yes,” Marta remembered. Birkett, the founder of Björk’s record label One Little Indian Records, wanted to know if she would be down to do two mixes, one of which was “The Gate.” “I received a call one morning in July from Derek Birkett,” mixer and producer Marta Salogni told me over Skype from her studio in London.

Who mastered bjorks album utopia