LABS releases LABS Obsolete Machines – a riot of hand built and modified machines, curated and created by electronic anarchist Sam Battle AKA Look Mum No Computer. 

Recorded on location at his museum in Kent (UK), electrify your compositions with sounds from the GAMEBOY Megamachine, Sega MegaDrive Synth, and a gargantuan 1000 oscillator Megadrone.

A digital guided tour of a museum filled with curious and hand-built eclectic and voltage driven monstrosities. This all-access pass around one of Britain’s most unique collections of obsolete gadgets, apparatus and computer-based machinery shows that as long as you are armed with a soldering iron and determined attitude you can extend the usefulness of tech – repurposing it far beyond being relegated to the scrap pile. 

“It was just inside me — the idea of being in a dark museum. I haven’t got a hoarding problem, now I’m a curator” 

– Sam Battle AKA Look Mum No Computer

KEY FEATURES

• PRESETS
  • The Mega Drone
    • The mega drone with all its detuning capabilities
  • Almost In Tune
    • The mega drone, brought to tune with more oscillators available over modulation
  • Transcend
    • The Transcendent 2000, straight from the museums walls
  • 8Bit Blasts
    • An array of 20 Gameboy DMG classics playing short notes
  • A Wall Of Classics
    • An array of 20 Gameboy DMG classics fighting to stay in tune
  • De Rezzed
    • The Sega Mega machine, FM synthesis at its 12bit finest, hand built by Sam
  • Punk Mod
    • The Sega Mega machine, FM synthesis at its 12bit finest, hand built by Sam
  • Formant Bass
    • A formant Synthesiser, a DIY-kit built by Sam himself
  • Attic Dust
    • A vintage Univox hand-restored from Sam’s Collection
  • Barely Functional
    • A vintage Univox hand-restored from Sam’s Collection

• CONTROLS
  • i1 – Expression
  • i2 – Unison/Warp/Dynamics
  • O1 – LP/HPF Filter
  • O2 – Reverb

Learn more here: https://labs.spitfireaudio.com/obsolete-machines

[Look Mum No Computer by Robbie Crawford]

About Look Mum No Computer (https://www.lookmumnocomputer.com/)

Kent-based writer, producer and self-declared “background engineer”, Sam Battle began Look Mum No Computer in April 2016, initially as a name for a ZINE, but it quite quickly became something completely different when he decided to get the video camera out. 

Sam has been a musician all of his life, in various bands – ZIBRA, being the most recent – and now he mainly builds musical machines and makes music with them. He tours quite a lot, taking his synths along for the ride.

His favourite food is beans on toast.

About LABS

LABS is a series of free software instruments, available in an easy-to-use, dedicated plug-in. 

The user interface is clutter-free and focused, featuring simplified controls, sliders for expression and dynamics, and a knob that can be easily customised to the user’s personal workflow.

About Spitfire Audio (www.spitfireaudio.com)

Spitfire Audio is a British music technology company that specialises in sounds — sample libraries, virtual instruments, and other useful software devices. It collaborates with the best composers, artists, and engineers in the world to build musical tools that sound great and are exciting to use.

Spitfire Audio was founded by two award-winning composers: Christian Henson and Paul Thomson. Born out of their shared dissatisfaction for string sample libraries, they pooled their resources and decided to record their own string samples at the legendary Air Studios in London. Initially, they invited a limited number of friends and associates to own copies of their samples, but whispers of this private sample club soon started to echo across the Atlantic Ocean throughout the composer community. Within a year, some of the most renowned composers in film and television signed up, so Paul and Christian decided to take their samples public. 

To date, Spitfire Audio has recorded and released over 100 sample libraries, collaborating with some of the biggest names in media composition, including Hans Zimmer, Eric Whitacre, Ólafur Arnalds & the London Contemporary Orchestra. Spitfire Audio’s sounds are heard in everything, from major Hollywood film scores to recordings by Radiohead and U2. Paul and Christian’s initial side project is now a thriving international music technology enterprise, with a uniquely experienced and diverse workforce, all focused on a shared mission: to inspire a generation of composers. The composer team remains at the centre of the business, drawing on their own experience as obsessive music makers to explore the needs and wants of their fellow composers.