The Sheffield Scenester

Back in early August, Gail (Sheffield Scenesters Editor and general bossy boots) held an art exhibition open evening at Brezza's, and as part of the evening’s entertainment Tom Moz Casserly and Pete Botterill from Ripoff Britain played an acoustic set. Usually renowned for their full band sets of hard blues rock, it was quite a refreshing change to see and hear their stripped down show. Once they finished, a lot of the crowd came forward to congratulation them and rightly so as it certainly worked well in the more intimate surroundings of the Italian bistro. Later that evening, once the crowd had died down a bit, we got chatting to Tom about the possibility of a video interview, it was an idea that we had been toying with for some time, and he seemed quite enthusiastic about it. As it turned out the first video we did was with Playground Mafia and having learnt a few lessons there e.g. take a tripod and sort out the lighting...we felt ready to tackle another interview.

This time it was with Ripoff Britain down at the studio, Skinboat HQ to be precise, where they were recording their new EP. As yet it is untitled....but it is a three track EP containing the songs ‘Without You’, ‘Wasted’ and ‘In My Head’ all of which they have played live before, so will be familiar to their fans. Of course like most studios I had a devil of a time finding it and Moz’s directions were a bit strange to say the least, he’d sent me a text saying “Near Keegan Sports, Sex Shop & String Socks/top of Doncaster Road. Finally I made it to the right street and so giving Moz a ring to say “I’m outside the sex shop!” he came out and found me.

Once inside, the studio itself was quite a interesting affair with strange paraphernalia strewn all over the place, Christmas lights strung along the back wall, recording equipment everywhere and if memory serves me right a life size star wars character stood in the corner (either Boba Fett or Darth Vader, I can’t remember). So we set the camera up, fixed the lighting, Moz and Pete were comfortably seated and we were ready to roll, it was then I had the idea to get the audio recorded with the studio equipment itself, they were happy to oblige and so off we went.

Talking about the new EP as well as how they began and their plans for the future, both as a band and as an acoustic duo, we had about twenty five minutes in the can. So with many thanks to Ian and Glen at Skinboat HQ for not only the use of their studio, but the audio track for the whole interview, as well as Pete and Moz for their time, here they are in all their glory!