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.
