Alto saxophonist Mike Phillips wants to be more than just another smooth jazz player riffing melodically over prerecorded rhythm tracks, so he tricks out his debut album,
You Have Reached Mike Phillips, with lots of ear-catching gimmicks. Harking back to his busking days, he includes moments recorded on commuter-train and subway stations; he has his young daughter sing his main theme, "You Have Reached Mike Phillips," a play on a telephone answering machine message; on "A True Story (Tabernacle - ATL)," he has
Audra Woodard recite a poem that sounds like an erotic encounter between two people, until it turns out to be between a man and his saxophone; and he adds vocals to occasional tracks. All of this makes the album more interesting to listen to than your average smooth jazz outing (though it occasionally makes Phillips sound like a guest on his own record), but the bulk of the disc still consists of background tracks created largely by programming (there are credits for "live drums" here and there, suggesting you have now reached the point that it's necessary to indicate when the drums are actually played by a human), keeping up a steady pulse, over which Phillips solos pleasantly like soprano saxists
George Howard and
Kenny G. The trouble, of course, is that it all tends to sound similar, and the soloist, playing against a steady backup, has nothing to push him or to play off of; he revs up or lays back depending on his mood, but it doesn't much matter which. Hidden Beach Recordings label head
Steve McKeever's liner notes discuss the problem of getting the sweaty excitement of Phillips' live performing onto the record. Maybe he should have just recorded a club gig instead.