The Sigla Blog

JAPE
Ritual
Co-Op
****

If the title of Richie Egan’s hugely anticipated third album suggests order and routine, his last couple of years have been anything but. Having had many interested labels snapping at his heels, he finally plumped for V2, only for it to be bought by Universal. In stepped Co-op, V2’s independent wing and after what seems like a chaotic age, these 10 tracks finally get a collective airing. The first thing you notice is that Egan has once again moved the musical goalposts, defying what people might have been expecting of him.

Since 2003’s Cosmosphere, Jape has consistently taken chances with his art, inverting any stereotypes of what one man and his guitar can do. In this case, he piles up layers of electronic glitches and sampled detours, creating a melting pot of styles and tempos.

If The Monkeys in the Zoo… hinted at his electronic obsessions, on Ritual they’re fully realised. Although the album is bookended by more measured tracks like Christopher and Anthony and the sublime, spacey ‘Nothing Lasts Forever’, in between, you can’t miss the increased BPM. The party tracks - the sharp, sullen ‘I Was A Man’ or the electro strut of ‘Streetwise’ - bubble away with a danceable fizz. But then Egan has always been able to gear up and down effortlessly between songs that make you dance, and ones that make you think. He can be bardic one minute, and bawdy the next - and that’s without an uncanny ability to inject seriousness into the most anodyne subjects.

Egan is a natural storyteller, demonstrated by the album highlight, ‘Phil Lynott’. In it he weaves together a tale of a Mastodon gig, a lunar eclipse and the realisation that one day - like Phil - he will be “a dead man who played the bass from Crumlin”. Artists don’t come more innovative than Jape, and Ritual proves that in Irish music, he’s definitely in a league of his own.

Download Tracks: ‘I Was A Man’. ‘Phil Lynott’. ‘Streetwise’.

Website: www.myspace.com/richiejape
Musical Rooms: Jape
Jape Interview