Sitting in a Reykjavík studio in the summer of 2017, Björk had a very specific request for Marta Salogni: The singer wanted to make a song sound like she was “whispering a secret amongst the fireworks.”
In Salogni’s role as mixing engineer, she tried to put herself in that scenario by asking herself a series of questions: Are the frequencies of whispers high or low? Is the sound muffled? How does the brain process the quiet confession relative to the overhead booming? And, maybe most important, how might the experience feel, physically and mentally?
Salogni set out to work at the mixing desk, adjusting levels and adding effects, searching for the sensation amid staccato drums, cascading harps, and sidewinding vocals. At last, she could imagine Björk sharing something personal amid the thunder of “Arisen My Senses,” the opening wonder of her album Utopia. The track’s stratified sense of sound, where the loud and the low seem to share space equally, was Salogni’s charge and coup.