@ The Town House - Whitley Bay 2006
Captain Wardrobe: Legend in my own lunchtime...

Music: It all started @ school, when Miss Rickard put me & Jason Parry in a separate room with a Casio synth...it seems this was the desired method to calm us down...it worked! so... i have always been making music, whether just playing harmonica at parties, singing in the park/bath/pub or dicking about on guitar/bass or doing collages on 4 track...or busting daft tunes on my laptop...it seems Miss Rickard was on to something - i've been in that little room ever since. it keeps me quiet. um...

Renegade Pharmacy has been making mad-tronica...and illbient-ambient experimental music since 2006. Before that, its pilot, Captain Wardrobe, aka Paul Cobbin, aka me, your humble webmaster yoda type thing, was engaged in the production of various projects. Many, many albums of Breakbeat techno (gizmochimps), Ambient (ALF) and dubtronica (Full Spectrum Analysis). Going way back, i was influenced by my association with the acid house/rave scene in Cornwall, while i was studying Fine Art degree there 88-91.
ok - It's 1988 - My first year away from the nuclear family unit - living off baccy / beer / pot / beanfeasts / pot noodles & i am in Falmouth, Cornwall. My first year studying for a Fine Art degree consists of doing the same shit i did on my other course before that - we are all bored beyond belief...enter my strange alter-ego. Captain Wardrobe came into being in the following fashion: One night in Falmouth School of Art Halls of residence...Myself, Mr Ben Phelps, Mr Andy Long, & Mr Vim Shah...decided to do Acid - it was fun - at one point one of these silly art students made a stunning realisation...that I, with my long hair & beard looked a bit like Jesus...I obliged by forming the cross with my arms up along the wall. Andy Long made the comment - "you are totally fucking wardrobe": to which i announced "I am the captain of all wardrobes" - and so a summer was devoted to such endeavors. This however got all completely out of hand - 20 years later he still plagues us all. By 1990.. I lived on a bus with John & Jasmin after discovering something called The Treworgy Tree Festival... - I also joined a band with some young 6th form punk kid called Luke Vibert [Peppercorn Rent] & his shy + awkward best mate Jeremy Simmons. The 'boss' of it was Paul Anthony - who actually rocked tits when i think back on it all...he was running the local venue which had bands like Misty & Roots + Poisened Electric Head. We could practice onstage...do what we wanted - these were class times indeed...
Bank circa 1991

[above] "The big blue bus, is calling us" - Jon W circa 1990...Falmouth, Cornwall.


er...No...NO i can't!
I moved away from the psychotic seagulls / pastys / crustiefied brew crew cornish folk in 1993, and sought my fame & fortune in Hackney, East London...I never found it though, but did manage to meet some very lovely people, do more partying/drunken-ness going out in East London to badly organised squats/raves etc. Shout outs got to Trevor Ramikee @ Utindin Studios, & Dr Dean -i- at Triangle workshop, Nellie & Bridget, Paulo the cake delivery man & Big John @ wine bar next door to the Trolley Stop Dalston. After moving to Highbury, eventually this tom-foolery ended up with me doing a jam with these students in a flat off Holloway Rd. A Special RIP to Toby Holloway - a special jam in my head with you drumming on it while we get arseholed on red wine is permanantly in my brain. So, then i was doing a Trance Techno band called alpha2 with Mr Tom Sweet & Mr Richard King. I played Guitar & shouty sang over the sequenced filtered beats they were messing with. Eventually i got hooked on 'puters & synths - doing gizmochimpy music on them. I met my ex-wife Carmen in North London & soon we were doing a band called Krill [with Tim Flood on Guitars]. We played just about every dive until they were all fed up with me being bossy because I wrote all the tunes & wanted them played properly! ha! Actually we were all fed up with having to pay to play - usually after a gig left with less than we started. what a joke!

[right] The London / Burton Crew 1996 [including Tom Sweet, Jasper de Beauvior, Richy Rich King, Barney, Johnny B, The Immortal Casio Smith, Trevor & Bernie Boyle [RIP]


[above] me & Kweeef! Pissed!
[below] me & Vykee, erm, Pissed!
So, London pooped out for us in 1998 and we missioned up to The North East.

8 years of marriage to a brave & patient woman called Carmen Curran and many hours in a room isolated making gizmochimps albums later, took its toll & our marraige was over. After a spell recovering living in an attic room that totally rocked & starring in a weird version of Men Behaving Badly with Mr Brad (happy joy joy) Suttcliffe... I hooked up with the Beach crew. Basically hung about & annoyed the fuck outta Whitley Bay, I acted exactly the way I acted in London and promptly got barred from EVERYWHERE! [Fuck the firestation pub !] I managed to start Renegade Pharmacy as a live music night, and promptly saw it stopped because, and i quote

"your music encourages drug use, mate"

anyhoo i managed to play my music in a few nice places. Many thanks go to the Tyne & Wear posse of Roger Armstrong, Vykee Campbell, Ryan Siddall [Ryan is Fun], Dan Peace & Keef Johnson [speaker hug], Ellen Wood & The Deformation Posse, Graeme @ Soundscape, + Kenny Breaks @ Red Institute, Edinburgh... who all gave support / contributed to the Ableton learning process & heightened post divorce breakdown paranioa that can be witnessed in the movie 'Captain Wardrobe Must Die'

NO thanks go to the sham fuckwits who talk bollox & make out i'm something i aint... if you are going to criticise me, then at least watch what i done, listen to the shit i make, or read what i wrote...fair enough, really innit?


@ The Station - Whitley Bay 2006
[pic above] Stage invasion! Mr Ryan Sidall finally gives in & lets me sing with him onstage with Ryan Is Fun @ Deep in Whitley Bay 200?.

so here is some stuff i made...bleepy bangy noises made by my computer, Juno + Kawai synthesisers...& crappy frankensteine-ed guitar/bass, also using computer software: I started out fucking about with Mixman, then went on to Fruityloops V.2.3-present day full studio version...then onto Ableton Studio.

You will also find a link to the feature length experimental Art-House movie I co-produced with Roger Armstrong [Laptop Acid Xperience]. Captain Wardrobe Must Die. It is now available stream via YouTube in its entirety. go here for more details.

oh fuck & bugger - 21st Century blues:

at 43yrs my music is still illegal...um!

well since 2008 i have been living in North Cyprus -
making the odd tune
[SEE BELOW]

i had been picking up where i left off with the acoustic guitar music i wrote years ago.

Myself & the rather lovely Rachel Saunby formed the duo Karma [Rachels' Facebook page] We loved the scene...I LOVE CYPRUS - we played to Restaraunts & Bars around the island & we did ok for a couple of has-beens, with a lot of hard knocks & stories to tell... we earned hardly any cash - but even this small fact saw our little project being knocked on the head because the NAZI ex-pat jealousy we had to put up with, which ended up with THE FUN POLICE being notified that our wonderful music had to stop because silly small minded people thought that because we got into the local paper a lot, our brand of acoustic folky re-imagined covers threatened their crap granddad rock 70's covers bands. pricks.

WTF! I'm a step dad!

2015... after meeting & initiating a year long
weird & wonderful family initiation i met
the wonderful Gemini & her 2 daughters
Jas [11] + Jan [9]
[who both feature telling story intros / Outtros on the planet of the alien cats album]

This enabled an alien cat invasion,
Gizmochimps were returned to the Planet Earth
and acid techno beats flowed verily from the mountain and
all was weird and wibbly once more.

what an amazing family...and ...oh dear...then i went wrong!


2018 - the whole preposterous bollox of the situation came to a head - i'm back in my apartment - loving life - joined the Abnormals (a mad as fuck comedy theatre troupe) painted some backdrops and drunk too much - thats over now - what a blast though! - i still play music with the angelicly voiced Rachel as Karma - played some lovely venues and... the music nazis have left us alone - thank fuck!...i'm making tunes...watching movies, drinking tea & eating crisps...having a swim... trying not to drink too much naughty things...