David Batten is a guitarist, songwriter, and producer. Largely self taught, he draws from a broad array of genres and musical traditions. He is from New York state, and has been enamored with music his entire life, beginning to play guitar at age 9 and quickly becoming obsessed with the instrument. He would bring it along to play on car rides, and would sometimes sleep holding a guitar. Growing up, he played and wrote in a progressive rock band which played a tour when he was 15 and technically kind of opened for Alice Cooper. He also played in a neo-soul band, and produced a bunch of electronic songs. In college he contributed as a guitarist and songwriter on two metal albums, played and cowrote in indie rock band Boatweiler, and worked as a musical accompanist for modern dance classes. The long improvisations involved in dance accompaniment had a large influence on his playing, and won him an award from the dance department, if you care about that kind of thing. For the next several years he focused on improving as an acoustic guitarist, songwriter, and producer, and began releasing and performing indie folk music music under his own name. Much of his attention recently has gone toward a solo indie pop project, Voice in Headphones, and an indie folk duo project, A Better Place, both of which are set to release music in early 2026. In the last year he also began performing solo free improvisational electric guitar sets. He eventually got hungry for collaboration in this arena and fortuitously hit it off with Abe Brownell, who soon became a frequent collaborator and invited him to play in Sun Salon. Current projects: David Batten, SARIKA, Voice in Headphones, A Better Place, Glovebox, Sun Salon. More to come. ![[David.jpeg|400]]