"Iron Orchid" reviewed in The Wire

Its paradoxical title, fusing intractable mass with delicacy, suits this music well. New Yorker David Bird hatched Iron Orchid in collaboration with Yarn/Wire pianist Ning Yu. This intense yet finely detailed electroacoustic work was conceived initially as a component of Mark Reigelman's sound sculpture Echo Chamber, channeled through speakers concealed within a stack of metal tubes. Computer-generated sounds respond in kind to the piano's intrinsic articulateness, and despite the sustained density there are a multitude of subtleties to be discerned and discovered within its skeins of microtones and restless variations of texture and timbre.