Biography
LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER is the project of Sam Battle, a Kent-based musician, inventor, and self-described backyard engineer born in the late 1980s in England. Raised with a childhood fascination for building and dismantling things, Battle took apart household appliances long before he understood their workings, built rockets and robots inspired by the television show Robot Wars, and discovered the guitar at age twelve. He studied chemistry briefly at university before transferring to Music Technology, then spent several years signed to and dropped by three separate record labels that wanted him to produce conventional pop output.[2]
Rather than pursuing a mainstream path, Battle launched LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER in April 2016 as a zine documenting his instrument-building experiments. He subsequently created a YouTube channel that drew a global audience through videos of him constructing instruments that had no commercial precedent: a Furby organ built from modified singing toys, a synthesizer fused with a Raleigh Chopper bicycle, a Game Boy triple-oscillator synthesizer, and instruments driven by Tesla coils.[3] By 2026 the project had accumulated over 1.4 million combined social media followers and more than 85 million music video views.[4]
Before LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER, Battle fronted the indie rock band ZIBRA, which performed at Glastonbury in 2015. He also runs a physical space in Ramsgate, Kent called This Museum Is Not Obsolete, which displays vintage analogue devices repurposed for absurdist and humorous ends.[3]
In 2026 Battle was selected as the United Kingdom's representative for the Eurovision Song Contest in Vienna, releasing the synth-pop single "Eins, Zwei, Drei" on March 6, 2026. The song, co-written with Lasse Midtsian Nymann, Julie Aagaard, and Thomas Stengaard, was built around his custom synthesizer Kosmo and became the first British Eurovision entry in history to include lyrics in a language other than English.[1] Commenting on the entry, Battle said: "I will be bringing every ounce of my creativity to my performances, and I can't wait for everyone to hear and see what we've created. I hope Eurovision is ready to get synthesized."[4]
References
- Synthtopia: LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER - Eins, Zwei, Drei — Coverage of the artist's Eurovision entry and synthesizer work
- NME: LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER unveils UK Eurovision 2026 song Eins, Zwei, Drei — Biographical details and quotes from Sam Battle
- Sonic State: LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER - Eins, Zwei, Drei - Eurovision — Details on Sam Battle's instrument-building background and the Kosmo synthesizer
- LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER on Bandcamp: Eins, Zwei, Drei — Artist's own statement about the song and his creative approach