Sam James Bartle (born 3 February 1989), known by the stage names Sam Battle and Look Mum No Computer, is an English musician, YouTuber, electronics enthusiast, and composer. He posts videos about making pro audio equipment and synthesisers, as well as original music.
Bartle builds unusual and eccentric electronic musical devices made from vintage technology, such devices as a Furby organ, a synthesiser fused with a classic Raleigh Chopper bicycle, and a Game Boy Triple Oscillator synthesiser. Battle runs This Museum Is (Not) Obsolete, a museum in Ramsgate, Kent, which showcases vintage analogue devices repurposed for humorous uses. He represented the United Kingdom in the Eurovision Song Contest 2026 with the song "Eins, Zwei, Drei" and finished in last place with 1 point.
Early life and education
Sam James Bartle was born on 3 February 1989 in Grantham, Lincolnshire, to parents Jane and Alan Bartle. He grew up in Yaxley, near Peterborough, and has a younger sister, Jodie, a professional footballer who also appeared as one of the "Kosmo" furry characters that appear in the music video for his Eurovision song "Eins, Zwei, Drei". Battle spent much of his childhood indoors experimenting with building projects, such as rockets and robots inspired by the television show Robot Wars. From an early age, Battle showed a strong curiosity for mechanics, frequently dismantling toys, household appliances like irons and toasters, and pedal cars to explore their inner workings. His grandparents were trustees of a lighthouse museum and when he was younger he enjoyed visiting the museum after hours.
When he was 16 he attempted to build an electronic guitar pedal and while still in secondary school he also attempted to make a synthesiser as well as attempting to fuse an acoustic guitar with a piano.
Around 2011, Battle went to university to study chemistry, but switched to a music technology course in the same year. He left in the middle of the course to join a band in London, where he stayed for three years. The band signed a record deal and recorded an album that was not released, and Battle learnt electronics during this time, and started creating his own electronic musical instruments again. Battle taught himself how to build the electronic musical instruments he plays.
Prior to beginning the indie-rock band ZIBRA, Battle worked in a number of jobs including fixing synths, fixing bicycles at Halfords and at one point he was a chef. Battle has further commented that when he first began performing music "I started off playing guitar mainly, and then through doing electronics and stuff I began making money by fixing synthesisers and through that we ended up using the synths, liking it and then eventually recording it. Also because my computer wasn’t very good I used the synths instead of using plug-ins, which is not what a lot of artists do. I kind of liked having that different approach of slicing and dicing things up because the computer was too latent to record. When we ended up with the sound we got we were quite happy".
Career
Look Mum No Computer performing with his "Kosmo" modular synthesiser at the Electromagnetic Field festival at Eastnor Castle Deer Park, Herefordshire, UK in 2022.
In 2013, Battle launched his YouTube channel, adopting the name Sam Battle, and began posting content for Zibra, a band that he had created with three friends. Battle was the lead vocalist and they performed at the Glastonbury Festival in 2015 as the final act on the BBC Introducing stage, as well as at the Field Day festival in London and they also performed as a support act on tour with Years & Years.
Initially music was the sole focus of his career; over time, it began to change to making videos for YouTube.
Zibra disbanded in 2016 and since then the YouTube channel has posted content related to Battle's solo music project. His first music gear related video was posted in 2016. Besides advertising income from YouTube, Battle has also been funding his electronic inventions (such as an organ made of flame throwers) with fan donations, on the subscription platform Patreon.
In 2011 he first came up with the concept for a Furby synthesiser he calls the "Furby organ" and it was completed in 2018 using 44 Furbies. In relation to the Furby organ Battle has commented that it is like "a Furby... that is able to gutturally sing as well as make its own circuit bent sounds... ...so this in essence is a truly polyphonic Furby formant synthesiser, it's kind of like a Polymoog but instead of Moog stuff, it's a Furby".
In 2022, Battle began restoring a 1914 church organ, as an exhibit in This Museum Is (Not) Obsolete, the process of which has been documented on his YouTube channel. Battle also produces and sells modular synthesiser components, such as the #1222 Performance VCO.
He released his first single, "Groundhog Day", in 2019 and later that year, he toured Germany, Switzerland and the UK. In May 2022, he joined with Cuckoo and Hainbach to form a musical supergroup called Uncompressed who performed together for the first time at Barcelona's Sónar festival in June 2019.
As well as music he present a travel docu-series series called Junk Rock TV where he travelled around Europe making musical instruments and performing alongside Hainbach, Pedro Javier Gonzalez, Lydia Kavina, and Fedde ten Berge.
In March 2025, he announced a video game called Look Mum No Computer, developed in collaboration with the German indie studio The Bitfather and publisher Headup Games. The game was released on Steam on 24 July 2025, and for consoles on 22 January 2026. In 2025 the game was nominated for the German Developer Award for Best Audio Design.
In February 2026, it was announced that Battle had been selected as the artist to represent the United Kingdom at Eurovision Song Contest 2026. His song, "Eins, Zwei, Drei", was released on 6 March and solely uses his "Kosmo" modular synthesiser. As of May 2026, his YouTube channel has over 91 million views.
Museum
Battle runs a permanent exhibition in Ramsgate, Kent, housing a collection of vintage electronics, synthesisers, and experimental musical instruments. Named "This Museum Is (Not) Obsolete", it opened in August 2021 and features items from his personal builds alongside donated historical pieces, emphasising hands-on interaction with obsolete technology. It attracts visitors interested in tinkering with early electronic devices, such as modified tape delays and modular oscillators.
Kosmo
Battle typically uses modular synthesisers in his compositions. He created Kosmo, a format for DIY-focused modular synthesizers.[unreliable source?] They feature 20-centimetre-long (7.9in) panels and are an alternative to Eurorack that is designed specifically for DIY construction and live performance.[citation needed] The format is designed to be cost-effective, allowing the use of stripboard circuits and 3D-printed panels, with many designs open-sourced by the community.
Personal life
Battle's first child, a son called Max, was born in April 2026.
Discography
As Look Mum No Computer
Singles
"Groundhog Day" – 2019
"Modern Gas" – 2019
"Shock Horror" – 2020
"Desperado Vespa" – 2020
"Daydreamer" – 2020
"Stand and Deliver" – 2020
"Youth8500" – 2021
"Stupid Me" – 2021
"Ride" – 2021
"Mind Over Matter" – 2021
"We'll Find a Way" – 2022
"Time Is Not a Healer It's a Fuel for Resentment" – 2022
12"Boar Music Interviews: Zibra". theboar.org. The Boar. Retrieved 27 April 2026. Boar Music:What were you doing before you made the band? Battle: I was in and out of other bands playing guitar and I wasn't singing… singing took a while to learn. I had a mixture of jobs from fixing synths and fixing bikes in Halfords to being a chef at one point too. I also went to University for a year and a half and studied Chemistry for 5 months realising it wasn't for me and that I wanted to pursue music. BM: Your experimentation with synths and keyboards is very different to other bands, why did you choose to create music in this unconventional manner? Battle: I started off playing guitar mainly, and then through doing electronics and stuff I began making money by fixing synthesisers and through that we ended up using the synths, liking it and then eventually recording it. Also because my computer wasn't very good I used the synths instead of using plug-ins, which is not what a lot of artists do. I kind of liked having that different approach of slicing and dicing things up because the computer was too latent to record. When we ended up with the sound we got we were quite happy.
12"Sam Battle AKA 'Look Mum No Computer' talks Creativity ICMP UK Music School Interview". YouTube. ICMP - Institute of Contemporary Music Performance. 4 November 2025. Event occurs at 1:58. Retrieved 29 April 2026. So I started by doing a solely music career trying to pursue that, songwriting and stuff and um being in a band and whilst it was working for a bit I felt like it it needed something else. And at that time I had a hobby of making musical instruments and I didn't really at the time think "oh this is going to be useful to be able to make a career from this", I thought it was just going to be a hobby... But then I started sharing videos about that and strangely enough... it really became an intrinsic part of my creative process which is amazing. It's freeing because it's it was one of my largest passions. Strangely enough it kind of overtook when the music started to feel more like a job to me at that point, there was like the hobby [building electronic instruments], but when... ...the thing that you absolutely have to do feels like what you got to do then the other side is the creative thing that lets you escape from that, so if you've got loads of these kind of things bouncing around, you're able to jump between and... ...like bring the true creative in, and chopping and changing. My favorite thing about creating is the fact that there are in essence, well there's not many rules. There's no rules. You can do, you can do what you want. One of the things I've discovered with YouTube is I tend to do a video a week and I've been doing a video a week sometimes more than that for nearly 7 years now. I have made videos and not put them out... there's an uncanny valley... It's just like this uncanny valley bit in the middle where it's like, it's a bit naff. And sometimes I put them out and I found that it's like oh shouldn't do that. But yeah, there's a few like uncanny valley videos that I've never put out... with an aim to maybe revisit them, but then quite a few of them just fizzle away. It's part of the process.
↑"STUFF". LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER. Retrieved 6 March 2026.
↑"How to sync a circuit bent furby to a synth video". YouTube. LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER. 15 January 2017. Event occurs at 00:05. So, basically in 2011, I wrote this... ...the Furby organ or in other terms it's called the Furby-Omatic... ...It never actually got built. I mean, I collected enough Furbies and then I ended up selling them all, which is crazy. I know. This is what I wanted it to look like. Loads of Furbies on top of an organ and like a, a line. There'll be like enough Furbies to cover the uh keyboard. So, that's my plan.
↑"THE FURBY ORGAN, A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT MADE FROM FURBIES". YouTube. LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER. 11 February 2018. Event occurs at 00:24. Retrieved 29 April 2026. ...there's gotta be more uses than that, surely, well for the past few years i've been dreaming up of a machine that will finally give these tragically discarded little dreamboats a use and here's a concept picture from a few years ago of the machine in question and finally after trawling through ebay and rummaging through charity shops up and down the land and a heck of a lot of soldering i present to you the furby organ and here we have 44 free-range homegrown little furby darlings that have been extensively modified using the fully patent void performance furby fusion synthesis brain modification surgery procedure along with a beautiful oak finish that wouldn't look out of place in your grandma's living room these furbies are able to sing, chat and play in a dream-like state hooked up into the mainframe in the back of the machine.
↑"Furby Organ Vlog #2 - Building It". YouTube. LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER. 5 January 2018. Event occurs at 3:58. I want the Furby organ to capture the sound of a Furby choir, basically the problem was, is I wasn't able to get a stable definite notes out of the Furby... ...I didn't know how to actually make the Furby sing. That's when I had a bit of a breakthrough and decided to make it slightly different so I basically designed a simple voice for each of the Furbies and it's called Furby formant fusion synthesis. So basically what it is, is a Furby... ..that is able to gutturally sing as well as make its own circuit bent sounds... ...so this in essence is a truly polyphonic Furby formant synthesizer it's kind of like a polymoog but instead of moog stuff, it's a furby.
↑"Meet the world's first synth-nerd supergroup". YouTube. Patreon. 25 May 2022. Event occurs at 00:17. Retrieved 1 May 2026. Right now, we're at This Museum is Not Obsolete. Cuckoo and Hainbach have come over to Ramsgate to meet up. We've already announced the gig in Barcelona this summer, but this is gonna be the first time that we're actually gonna play together. I'm used to doing this kinda stuff on my own, like electronic music and making videos, but this'll be the first time we're gonna do it as a band.
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