It's been a while since Richie Egan was last in Cork under the guise of Jape but it's understandable - there's been a whole lot going on his world: record and publishing deals, EP's / Singles, festival appearances, overseas tours, flying fruit and a subsequent youtube phenomenon, not forgetting Jack White's approval.

Egan has certainly come a long way since Cosmosphere, his debut album, released back in 2003. In those four years Jape has undergone a transformation. His debut album, while promising, lacked conviction, and Egan, away from the safety net of the Redneck Manifesto, seemed an unsure electronic producer and unconvincing indie-songwriter. But Egan proved, within a year, that he was a fast learner, when his 2004 album, The Monkeys in the Zoo Have More Fun Than Me, landed. More sure-footed both in song-writing and production terms, the album was critically lauded and it's lead-off track, 'Floating' singled where Egan was heading. Three years on from the albums release, that track is still working its magic. It makes four appearances on Jape's latest record, the EP/Single Jape is Grape, a stop-gap release of sorts, before Richie's long awaited follow-up to The Monkeys in the Zoo drops in 08.

"I'm so happy to be finished my third album now," he says. "It's the hardest thing I have ever done and it took me three years altogether to do it. I can still hardly believe I finished it.. there were times when I really didn't think it would ever get done and now I just finished mixing it in London last week and it feels amazing. So my head is off looking for a party!

Jape is Grape, a six song EP, including three remixes of 'Floating', was released earlier this month, as a precursor to the full length album. When quizzed however as to whether the release is an accurate indicator of what people can expect from the forthcoming album, Richie admits the release is more about giving Floating one last airing. "The label wanted to release Floating as a single but I mean for me that's such an old song. The new record has a lot more depth to it I think. It's gonna be on the CoOp label and not V2 because V2 got bought out by Universal. It was a little worrying for a while but now I couldn't be happier…to be honest I always felt there were a lot of crappy bands on V2 anyway (laughs).

Whether Richie is over 'Floating' or not, the fact remains there is a huge new audience the world over being turned onto it's slacker-post-club-philosophy thanks to an eye-catching video where Egan is pelted with a stalls worth of fruit. It would be no overstatement to say it has become something of an internet phenomenon. "It's kind of surreal that nearly 700,000 people have seen it and it's a testament to the hard work that DADDY and M&E did. It's a cool video, the idea for me was always to have something that I would want to see myself and with that video it succeeded. It's nuts reading the comments on youtube… one girl said, 'he's really ugly, I wish they were throwing rocks at his head instead of fruit', which was pretty funny. I had to stop reading them after that one.

The Floating phenomenon also reached out and found a new audience when The Raconteurs opted to cover the song on their world tour. But despite it's success, Richie feels it's time to move on to life post-Floating. "Basically, Brendan Benson was in Dublin and heard it in a bar and decided to cover it with the Racontuers. It was pretty nuts - I got a phone call when I was playing at the Rose of Tralee festival and it was him telling me to come up to Dublin and see their gig where they were gonna cover it the next night. So I legged it back on the train with my girlfriend and we went to the gig, saw them play it and got to meet them and shit. They ended up being cool dudes and covered it all over the shop, so I'm just waiting now for the royalties to start coming in:) It was great to see them play it, like most people wouldn't have a clue who I was so when they said here's a song from a Dublin band Jape - I was all like, 'ha! open your ears fuckers'. But yeah, that song had it's horlicks a long time ago for me."