Deep Dive: Lycio – Danger

UK alt.pop trio Lycio create music with heart and a whole lot of soul as you can hear on their new single Danger. Drenched with emotion and reminiscent of the glory days of trip-hop and British soul, this gem of dark electronic pop gets a Deep Dive courtesy of band vocalist Genie. Great to hear the famous ‘Zapp’ vocal effect in play here!

Lyrics and genesis of Danger

When we write it’s either we just jam and freestyle in the moment until we get something good and we’re like “yes, that’s the one” or Alex and Charlie present me with a really cool instrumental and I think of ways to elevate it.

With Danger, it was definitely the latter. When I wrote the lyrics, I was feeling really sensual. I had a cheeky crush on a co-worker at the time and took inspiration from that and channelled my sexual frustration into the song. I also wanted to challenge myself vocally and try something more simplistic and delicate than my usual style of singing. And perhaps something a little futuristic too.

Throughout the progression of the song, the lyrics and singing style shift from subtle, coy flirting to something a bit more aggressive and raw. Almost like my frustration is continuously growing throughout the song. All in all, we took some risks with this track, I just hope they paid off.

Instrumentation and recording

 For Alex and Charlie a couple of moments stick out when recollecting the recording of Danger. As you can hear the track features this distinctive Agogo sound. We had already written the instrumental, and Charlie just casually picked up an Agogo that Alex owns and played the first thing that came to mind over the track.

Entirely by coincidence, this happened to be in the key of the already composed chord changes; and it was a real moment of synchronicity which ended up creating the unique amd recognisable instrumental hook.

Another crazy story is the autotuned lead vocal heard on the final track. This was initially just the demo vocal. When we came to track the song for good, we spent two days recording the ‘proper’ lead line. But when we’d finished this, we partially reverted to the demo vocals for much of the track. So, the result is this kind of hybrid vocal, hence the dual ‘robot’ vs ‘non-robot’ vocals.

Where does Danger fit within your overall sound?

I feel like there are so many different variants of our sound, and Danger is just one of those variants. It has some of those authentic analogue instruments within it like the drums, and believe it or not, an Agogo bell. And it also has a similar darkness as some of our other songs, and of course, some big synth sounds.

What really separates this song from our others is that we’ve branched out with the vocal style, the vocal effects and the backing vocals. I can’t quite describe what I was going for with that, but I just know I wanted it to be cool. I wanted it to be a vibe, and to be breathy and sexy. I’m not sure how the track comes across to you, but for me, it’s pretty sexy.

Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are the places to go to discover the band and their music in greater depth. Danger and more music from Lycio can be heard on Spotify, Deezer, and Apple Music – click here for more streaming alternatives.

You can catch the trio, each of whom are also multi-instrumentalists, play live at Worcester Music Festival later this month.