In contemporary Ireland, you know it’s getting close to Christmas time when you turn on the television and see a Christmas tree floating down a river, and hear the combining voices of Richie Egan and Gemma Hayes singing The Ravonettes' The Christmas Song. So, it’s only fitting that at least one of those two play a show in Ireland each Christmas.

Egan’s Jape roll into Vicar Street on December 12th, with Pleasure Beach and Booka Brass Band in tow to celebrate Christmas and to send Jape’s ‘This Chemical Sea’ album - one of the year’s finest Irish releases - off with a bang.

It’s been a busy year for Egan; releasing not one, but two albums in 2015, with ‘This Chemical Sea’ garnering critical and fan acclaim back in January. His first solo album proper, ‘.wav Goodbye’, was just recently released, its title a witty pun on the music industry standard file type.

Despite moving to Malmo, Sweden, several years ago Egan can regularly be found gigging in Ireland as Jape or making guest appearances with an eclectic range of artists, such as fellow Redneck Manifesto alumni Neil O’Connor’s Somadrone.

“It was great,” says Egan down a crackly phone line of the recent Somadrone show in The Unitarian Church. “It was great to just relax and play bass. I love to do that in other people's bands.”

Egan has also collaborated with the likes of David Kitt and Booka Brass Band, whom he joined onstage for a version of Phil Lynnot’s Old Town at Vicar Street earlier this year

“I love to collaborate with other musicians,” he enthuses. “I feel like all musicians have a unique sense of timing. Where they put a note mightn’t be the same place you'd put a note. I feel whenever you play with somebody else you broaden your own musical palette a bit. You get an insight into their musical mind, and for me that's instructive”

Despite the huge success of Jape, Egan refuses to fall into the trap of sitting on his creative laurels. “I'm learning...you gotta accept, if you're gonna be in this long-term, that you know nothing and try to learn something every day.”

So where does this intrinsic lust for collaboration and experimentation with new sounds stem from? For Egan the answer is quite simple.

“It all started with The Redneck Manifesto - we are like a jigsaw of musicians, we just fit together in a really nice way. That's where I learned that everybody has different timings. I've been on a bit of a quest over the years to suss out other people's timings by playing with as many different people as I can.”

When you consider such statements it makes the release of Egan’s first solo album seem the antithesis of his raison d'être and quite at odds to his creative process to date. So it comes as no surprise when Egan states that ‘.wav Goodbye’ was never, “meant to be released” to the general public due to the highly personal subject matter it contains. It is in fact the sound of a man trying to get his head around the most difficult moments in his life by deciphering his thoughts and feelings in song and allowing him to sing about subjects men struggle to express externally.

“In the last year, I've been thinking more of Jape as sort of an electronic sound," says Egan, “and on the side I've been working on other quieter songs and just put them up under my own name because when you forward into the future, I don't really know whether to go ahead with Jape stuff or maybe other new things. That's why I stuck those songs up as Richard Egan.”

“A lot of those songs were not actually supposed to be released, ever,” says Egan stressing the personal aspect of the material. “If I have a situation in my life, I tend to try and write songs about it to sort of make sense of whatever situation is going on. Those ones came from personal stuff that was going on in my life and I didn't ever really think I’d release them, but a few people that had heard them said to me that I should stick them up.” Egan shouldn’t have been worried - releasing his most personal material to date has turned out to be a cathartic experience. “I'm glad to get them out and let people hear them.”

‘.wav Goodbye’ is a collection of songs that “were basically all just recorded in my gaff on a home recorder,” says Egan.“I always like when you hear stuff that's demo-y...a lot of the time people will send me a demo of a track and I'll think it's amazing, and then you'll hear the album and it hasn't got the same spark in it. Those ones (‘.wav Goodbye’) are all just first take scenarios and I think you can feel that off them.”

Perhaps the spark Egan’s speaks of was another reason why these songs bypassed the Jape cannon, as 2015 has been a hectic schedule of gigging around Europe, reducing the possibility to bringing the songs through the Jape filter.

“I've often found that with songs, when you write a song the first day or two - where you have that window - that's a really important time, because you're exactly in that mind-set of the song,” says Egan. “If you leave it for a week and come back to it, you are in a slightly different mind-set so you can't quite remember...you can remember technically how to be, but emotionally, you're just different. If you can nail them down as fast as possible, you get more of the essence of the song.”

The gentler, more acoustic sound of ‘.wav Goodbye’ will come as no surprise to anyone who viewed Jape’s performance for Dublin’s Press Record, where Egan transferred the elctro-heavy tracks of 'The Chemical Sea' into the acoustic domain with the track Metamorphosis becoming almost unrecognisable from the album version. “I tend to write in as many different ways as possible,” says Egan. “Sometimes I start with a beat, sometimes I start with acoustic guitar. With Metamorphosis, that started on acoustic guitar with a completely different version to the one on Press Record. Then I took it in, made it electronic and then reworked it out for the acoustic guitar again.”

“It's cool to do that because if a song is gonna stand up I think it should work on an acoustic guitar. If it's a lyrical song, it should stand up on the acoustic guitar. It's a matter of just sitting down with the guitar and trying to figure something out. I love the synth tones on that record. It was cool to get rid of all the synths and see if the lyrics stand up on their own.”

Many people believe that Ireland is experiencing a golden age in terms of musical creativity whilst others feel the scene - particularity in Dublin - is all hype and self-congratulatory, with little substance to it. Removed from the coalface of the Dublin scene for several years now, how does Egan view the scene he grew up in from afar?

“I live in Malmo in Sweden now - in terms of those two cities Dublin's - if you want to call it a 'scene' - is way, way more creative than anything that's going on in Malmo," says Egan. “There's so many good acts from Dublin. Week by week, it's insane the amount of stuff coming out. In Malmo I'm looking out for stuff - I’ve found one or two bands, but overall there's nowhere near as much stuff and as much community. Maybe it's because I came here a bit older so it's harder to fit in. It's a different scene in both Stockholm and Gothenburg, they’re much more creative scenes than Malmo where I live. Dublin's way more cooler.”

Having won The Choice Music Prize for best album twice does Egan feel the pressure of being on a hatrick? “Not really, for me it's always to write a better album than the last one and try and put more of myself into it,” he says. “Whether or not you win anything...nothing would really change, win, lose, nominated or not. It's still just the pressure I put on myself to make things better the next time around. I've won it twice but it hasn't had a huge effect on me creatively or anything.”

It may seem strange that someone as busy as Egan would find time for social media, but Egan admits he’s “addicted to that shit.” He can often be found interacting with fans on Twitter and tweeting about his love for Conor McGregor, as well as engaging in an open war of words with Irish band Pugwash, who have - amongst other things - accused him of buying the Choice Music Prize. So where does this beef stem from? Egan seems genuinely bemused by the whole situation.

“When I won the Choice award, they were pissed off about it and I heard from some promoters I know that they were slagging me from the stage on the tour they did that particular year. Grand, no response from me, I couldn't give a shit. Then about two years later your man [Thomas Walsh] was interviewed in The Sunday Times and he started slagging me off and I'm going 'this guy has a problem'. Then for The Picnic this year they started up again, and this time I started to go at them a bit. To be honest with you, it's just bizarre to me. It just feels quiet hilarious, I'm used to most musicians in Ireland being very friendly and supportive of each other, even if they're not particular fans of the band. It's a small country and there's no point being an asshole, just keep your mouth shut. That's the way I look at it, but if they wanna have a go I just think it's hilarious some of the shit they've been coming out with. It's kind of daft. Best of luck to them in the future, it's a compliment to me; I don't really give a shit about their band. I'll take a slagging and I'll come back with a better slagging as I've done all my life. I'm from Crumlin and that's how we do it in Crumlin”.

Unsurprisingly Richie Egan is much happier to talk about his fellow Crumlin home-town hero, Conor McGregor. “I didn't like him at first,” admits Egan. “I thought he was a bit not so cool, but now I think he's great. He’s just a character...a Muhammad Ali-ish type of dude. I like his wit.” Egan’s affectionate tweeting musn’t have gone unnoticed as the team behind RTE McGregor documentary, The Notorious, got in contact. “The guy who was editing The Notorious asked me could he use an instrumental of I Was A Man in a scene.” And Egan is open to the possibility of McGregor using more of his music in the future. “I was thinking that that would be amazing if he used that [I Was A Man] as his walk-in music ,but the only thing is it's in the past tense and I don't think he'd want to be saying ‘I was a man' - I’d probably have to rejig the lyrics to 'I am the man' or something.”

Which brings us nicely back to Jape’s gig in Vicar Street on December 12th, which Egan hopes will set you up nicely before the McGregor V Aldo bout. And by the sounds of it Jape are pulling out all the stops for this show. “We've got a big setup” says Egan excitedly, “we did a gig at the Electric Picnic this year, we'd a twelve-piece band or something playing, we'd extra synth, extra guitar, two backing singers, brass and stuff like that.”

“We took the sound and really expanded it out and it was really a lot of fun and we want to try and do that again. That's basically what the Vicar Street gig is - big, big, band...we are gonna try and do a lot of old songs. Egan is currently taking requests via social media. “It's the last gig of the 'This Chemical Sea' album cycle so we're pulling out all the stops. It’s great having female backing singers onstage, it changes the whole energy of the band. They take the lead in parts. It’s good fun. There might be one or two [special guests]...you never know Pugwash might come up and do a song”

You can also catch Jape DJing at Nialler9’s LUMO event after his gig in Vicar Street, where you can expect to hear ABBA. “I'll bring the cheese, there's no better man to bring the cheese. I'll bring the cheese all the way from Sweden.”

Catch Jape Live at Dublin’s Vicar Street on December 12th with support from Pleasure Beach and Booka Brass Band. Ticket info here.