Shropshire Star

Who is UK Eurovision entry Look Mum No Computer?

The musician, real name Sam Battle, will represent the UK in Vienna.

By contributor Laura Harding, Press Association Deputy Entertainment Editor
Published
Supporting image for story: Who is UK Eurovision entry Look Mum No Computer?
Look Mum No Computer is the UK’s Eurovision entry (BBC/PA)

YouTuber Look Mum No Computer (LMNC) will find a whole new fanbase as the UK’s Eurovision entry.

The Kent-based experimental electronic artist, real name Sam Battle, will represent his country at the contest in Vienna in May.

LMNC first started in April 2016, initially as a name for a zine, a homemade or self-published booklet devoted to a specialised subject matter, according to his website.

He said the zine reflected his “unavoidable dodgy creative side” but “quite quickly became something completely different, when I decided to get the video camera out”.

He lists his favourite food as beans on toast and says he has been a musician “all my life”, most recently in the band Zibra, which performed at Glastonbury.

He said: “Now I mainly build musical machines and make music with them!

“I have no training in electronics, and about a year and a half of music at uni, so I wouldn’t trust anything I say because I don’t really know anything in an academic sort of sense, think of me more as a backyard engineer.”

As Look Mum No Computer, Battle has cultivated an online fanbase for building and playing unusual and eccentric electronic instruments; notably, organs made from toys such as Furbies and Game Boys, synthesizer bicycles, flame-throwing keyboards, and a Star Wars droid orchestra.

He has released a number of singles, albums and EPs, and recently returned from a nationwide tour across Germany, the birthplace of the underground electronic music scene.

In 2019 he gave a TEDx talk discussing some of his more outlandish inventions, entitled How to make Musical Flamethrowers Furby Organ + Strategic Procrastination.

He holds a Guinness World Record for building the world’s largest drone synthesizer in Ramsgate, Kent, on September 25 2020 and has curated and opened a museum displaying his curious creations, called This Museum Is (Not) Obsolete, in Ramsgate.

He also writes and produces for other artists, including Barns Courtney and Kawala.