Overall, Donald Byrne vs Bobby Fischer is a great release and very worth listening to. It is smart, entrancing, transcendent, glitchy, and reminds me more than a little bit of the great works of Brian Eno.
An engaging experience
Listening to Steve Hadfield’s Donald Byrne vs Bobby Fischer is an engaging experience. The album is named (and themed) after famous chess competitions and features aesthetic and cerebral qualities. The opening track ”The Game of the Century (1956)” has a trance-like vibe. Drones appear, and are used well and subtly as repetition makes the phrases seem Mantric. The track evolves naturally into atmospheric ambient pulses with percolations of electronic and sharpened glitch sounds. ”Rejected Queen Sacrifice Line” is punctuated with methodical pulses. Distinctive early synth-sounding perks dress the rhythm up as it features organic electronic sounds and melodies. Some piano tones also appear and in many ways, reminds me of the piece Brian Eno composed for his 77 Million Paintings application.
Overall, Donald Byrne vs Bobby Fischer is a great release and very worth listening to. It is smart, entrancing, transcendent, glitchy, and reminds me more than a little bit of the great works of Brian Eno.
Steve Hadfield wrote a program in Supercollider which converts the moves of a game of chess into midi outputs to control synths. In a nutshell:
- The opening moves determine a scale of notes to be played and these are mapped to the ranks of the chess board.
- The files of the board map to each half-beat of a bar.
- On each half-beat, pieces which have moved at least once (kings always play as they’re the crux of the game) play a note based on their rank.
- Each piece type is assigned a different synth.
- Percussion plays in some setups based on all the piece positions.
Steve is planning a series of releases based on famous games across the ages and also performs regularly around the north of the UK, inviting audience members to play live games for a unique immersive chess experience.
Donald Byrne vs Bobby Fischer 0-1 – The Game of the Century (1956) — Generative Chess Music is available on Disintegration State. [Bandcamp]
