Hiromi - Place to Be (2009) CD Review

After three trio releases, two quartet albums and a live duet, Hiromi releases a solo piano album. It's a refreshing change, and showcases her eclectic mix of musical styles.

Here's a simple song by song breakdown.

BQE: The song opens at a blistering pace and never lets up for the entire 6 minutes. It's progressive odd-time signatures and dissonant scales evokes the frustration of being stuck in rush hour in the BQE. I'm so glad I'm not a commuter in NYC.

Choux A La Creme: Cream puffs also happens to be one of my favourite snack, and this song is as enjoyable, lighthearted and tastilicious as the real thing.

Sicilian Blue: A long quieter improvisational piece filled with complex solos and jazzy harmonies. It's reminiscent of "Spiral", both melodically and stylistically.

Berne, Baby, berne: A happy melodic romp based on a jingle played at Marian’s Jazzroom, Bern, Switzerland before each of her gigs. Nothing out of the ordinary here, but the solos are nice.

Somewhere: Pensive and quiet, this track recalls Green Tea Farm from 2005's album Spiral.

Cape Cod Chips: A relaxed uptempo tune filled with great soloing. A very rhythmic piece with creative soloing and a surprising ending.

Island Azores: A melodic piece which captures the spirit and beauty of the Azores Islands off the coast of Portugal. Hiromi's use of staccato gives the song a very clean, simplistic feel.

Pachebel's Canon: After opening with its well-known bass line, the melody enters with some intiguing harpichordic effect on the piano. The ensuing syncopated solos may detract purists as expected. In my opinion Hiromi could have done a lot more with the song than to simply jazz it up.

Viva Vegus Suite: "Show City, Show Girl" is a show tune which sounds so big it's begging for full orchestration. "Daytime in Vegas" is what one expects - quiet and a tad mysterious. "The Gambler", is one hell of an ending to this triology. The song's introduction on the piano high end is reminiscent of a slot machine coming to a stop and hitting the jackpot. The song then launches into a hyper-speed section with blisteringly fast runs before coming to a climatic conclusion.

Place to Be: This version in my opinion is much better than her live recording with Chick Corea. The beautiful melody is much more suited to a single piano.

Green Tea Farm - This bonus track from the Japanese edition is the album's biggest surprise. The song is infinitely more interesting with vocals, and Akiko Yano voice was a perfect choice.

This album recaptures some of the raw emotional intensity from her debut "Another Mind" which seemed to be less apparant in a quartet setting. Like a lot of her music, most of the tracks are too dense for casual listening. However, should you catch her soloing on tour, it will definitely be a fine place to be.

Motorola ZN300 Review: First Impressions

I bought this phone mainly as a music player, and I was looking for something with enough storage to dump my gigabytes of music on.

Packaging: I always hated those huge ass phone boxes and packaging, but I was very pleasantly surprised to see the phone come in a small cubish box exactly bigger than my fist. As environmentally friendly as it gets.

Size and build: The phone is somewhat heavy and thick by today's standards (107g), but the build quality is top notch. The phone's slider is spring loaded and very smooth. Its face and keypad are glossy black and a real fingerprint magnet. The back is brushed aluminum, giving the whole phone a very futuristic design.

Audio player: The 3.5mm jack is a huge plus, and very conveniently located at the top left. However, this phone must be built for half-deaf people -- the headphone jack is LOUD. With my in-ear headphones, I had to lower the volume down to 1 and it still felt loud in a quiet room. I'm going to see if updating the firmware will fix it (I can't be the ONLY person with the phone who doesn't like the cheapo bundled headset, which are still quite load at vol. 1 out of 7). The music player is basic as hell (no EQ) and sound quality is on par with the iPod.

Camera: Despite being marketed as a camera phone, I have to say the photo quality is pretty crap. 3.1 megapixels is pretty mediocre by today's 2-digit mpx standards. I haven't tried the video but I wouldn't expect it to be any better.

Interface: The menus are pretty straightforward, and there are options to make all parts of the phone easily accessible (you can even tweak the main menu icon order). A very user friendly phone.

Verdict: As an overall package, I'd say it's not bad. After all, it's only HK$1380 (US$178). Granted, there's really nothing amazing or stellar about the phone, except for the big storage space.

Pros:
- 3.5mm headphone jack
- Up to 32GB external
- Cheap price
- Stylish design
- Screen quality

Cons:
- Phone's face and keypad are fingerprint magnets
- Camera quality
- A tad bulky
- Nothing out of the ordinary.