Jape

Richie Egan is one of the good guys. An ever genial and engaging interviewee - just a great laugh if we’re honest - the part-time Redneck Manifesto/ full-time Jape man is in fact one of the best. His charms also have the canny knack of disarming. For, with Burial, his third album as Jape after three with the Manifesto, the Dublin electro wizard got serious. And for the first time too.

“I had to have a step up,” Richie told us after the album’s release earlier this summer, his first record to travel outside Ireland. “I never really did my best before. I was always just messing with shit and fluting around which I still do to a certain extent but I wanted to focus and concentrate this time.”

After 2003’s limited-run Cosmosphere and the following year’s The Monkeys In The Zoo Have More Fun Than I Do - a record that spawned the Brendan Benson picked up/Raconteurs consistently covered ’Floating’ - was the new outlook a result of Jape becoming more than just a side project?

“It was more that I left my job and said this has to work or else I’m fucked,” Richie admits, “It was the first time I ever had fear to drive me. It was the first time I kind of gave a shit to be honest with you. The other two I was just going whatever, I was trying, but just thinking this sounds cool but now, yeah, I’m more focused… but it’s hard,” he says with a rather maniacal laugh and a slightly crazed look in his eye. “I’ve gone mad, you can tell I’m losing it!”

“But fear is good," he continues. "Fear of not having any money - I know money can’t be a driving factor - but you create better shit when your ass is on the line. And you know, I listened to the record a couple of times after it came back from being mastered and I thought it sounded pretty cool and I never really thought that before about any of my records.”

There was also an element of fear that Burial might have been buried amid label strife. While Richie readily admits to have taken his time on this one, there were a few “stressful months” where his barely inked contract with the shortly after sold-on V2 was being scrutinised before being passed seamlessly on to the Co-Op label along with like-minds such as Caribou and The Notwist. Similarly industry-savy after nearly a decade in music, Richie had already used the deal to his long-term advantage.

“I had my plan,” he says of investing the bones of the album’s budget - 20 or 30 grand - on new equipment.

“I went into the whole vibe thinking I’ve been around music for a long time, I’ve seen friends of mine signing deals with major/independent labels who are left at the end saying ‘what the fuck happened’. I walked into this with my eyes open. Probably, I’m going to get dropped. Definitely, I’ll get dropped at some stage. So if I get this money, I’ll spend it on equipment and if I get dropped, fuck it, I’ll still have something to show for it.”

With three grand spent on an analogue to digital converter here and an eBay purchase of a stolen and thankfully found 1970’s Italian siel orchestra keyboard there, Richie’s Harolds X front room must be getting seriously cluttered. The last time we spoke - when an A&R scrum scrapped for his signature eighteen months earlier - his girlfriend’s patience was wearing thin.

“It’s getting worse! There’s just shit all over the place… I don’t know how my girlfriend puts up with me. She‘s just got used to it I suppose. You know those old men who collect newspapers. That‘s me. Except with synthesizers.”

The new equipment is also paying dividends on the road where Jape is/are (I’m still not sure where to go on that one) currently touring the UK with Friendly Fires. Teaching himself hardware sequencing to improve the live show, Richie has literally been replacing man with machine. That is except for fellow Manifesto man and constant live player Matthew Bolger (also half of the M&E team who directed both above videos). Solo project or no solo project, the pair just can’t stay away from each other.

“He’s the one person I trust musically. I trust his ears and I think he’s an amazing musician but it’s horrible, I know… we’re like a married couple. Although when you survive a week in a travel lodge in Kings Cross with someone watching Deal or No Deal, you know he‘s a cool dude,” he says of a early summer London “junket” ruined by a dodgy curry.

And beyond happy marriages and clattered garages, what lies ahead for Jape? Fittingly, it’s a realistic future.

“I just hope that, well, the things is if your record does well enough you’re given the chance, an advance, to do another one so that’s just the main thing really.”

Jape is currently on a UK tour with Friendly Fire before touring Ireland later in the month supported by Goodtime John.

Oct 2, Ruby Lounge, Manchester
Oct 4, Club ifor bach, Cardiff
Oct 5, Acadamy, Oxford
Oct 6, Audio Brighton
Oct 7, KCLSU, London

Oct 9, Button factory, Dublin
Oct 10, Stiff kitten, Belfast (also with Halfset)
Oct 11, Nerve centre, Derry
Oct 14, Cypruss Avenue, Cork
Oct 15, Dolans, Limerick
Oct 16, Roisin dubh, Galway
Oct 17, Spirit store, Louth
Oct 18, The Clarence, Sligo