Transcending: A Conversation with Sam Morrison and Bill Laswell on ‘Cosmic Trip’

After being rediscovered at Newport in 1955, Miles Davis spent the next twenty years revolutionizing music. With the First Great Quintet, chordal structures were pulled apart into broader modes. Works with Gil Evans interjected improvisation ingenuity into orchestral grandeur. The Second Great Quintet, partly propelled by Wayne Shorter’s compositional prowess, approached forms with an even greater freedom, even teetering towards the edges of avant-garde expressionism. And while not the first to plug in, Miles’s electric work laid the precursors for ambient music, hip-hop, post-rock, IDM, drum ‘n’ bass, and more, stretching far beyond the stereotypical “jazz” circles. His mind was seemingly continually at work, seeking out the latest sonic territory for him to conquer. But where his artistic spirit soared, by the mid-1970s, his body forced him only to perch. Hip problems, pneumonia, ulcers, exhaustion, and a busted embouchure not only made practical application of his ideas difficult but downright painful. By July of 1975, he could barely continue. After a few more performances – including, fittingly, at the Newport Jazz Festival, though now exiled to New York – the trumpeter called it quits by September. The following almost six years became a hole in the maestro’s discography, with no new studio albums or live shows. However, his draw to music largely continued with several planned, then aborted, recording sessions during that absence. Even if Miles could not follow up on his ideas, music kept pulling him in until they could become a physical reality in 1981. What is it that draws an artist to continue to create even while experiencing pain and discomfort? What puts their spiritual calls above the needs of the physical? These questions lie at the heart of a full appreciation of Sam Morrison’s Cosmic Trip (M.O.D. Reloaded, 2025).

Morrison’s own history is inevitably intertwined with Miles’ failing health. After the “Prince of Darkness” returned from Japan, where he recorded Agharta (Columbia, 1975) and Pangaea (Columbia, 1976), he was ready to push his music into a different direction, as he had done so many times before. In late April and Early May 1975, his septet performed at Paul’s Mall in Boston, a venue that Miles frequently used to test new ideas and audition players. Upon hearing the sheer vigor of the then twenty-two-year-old Morrison’s tone,  he invited the saxophonist to sit in with his group and, ultimately, replace Sonny Fortune in the ensemble. Miles was so drawn to the young Morrison’s sound that he supposedly said that he hadn’t “heard that much fire on the saxophone since ‘Trane.” Listening to his horn parts on Cosmic Trip, it is obvious why he would reach such a conclusion. A half-century later, Morrison still plays with a great intensity that shines through. Given his distinctive voice, if he had continued with that band, it is possible he could have ended up in the great lineage of saxophonists who had recorded with Miles, which stretched way back to Charlie Parker. Of course, it was not to be. Morrison never did record in the studio with Miles.

It must have been frustrating for the young Morrison to continue on, knowing how close he came to being in that pantheon of saxophone greats, only to have it slip away due to forces entirely beyond his control. Yet his time performing live with Miles was not without its consequences. The rich textural environments Miles created with his pieces can be heard on Cosmic Trip, a work where he creates his own electronic terrains to improvise over and interact with.  The album’s forward-thinking edginess, often found in Miles’ work, also finds a parallel in the album. But, of course, that is all done with Morrison’s own perspective and approach, not as a mere replication of Miles. The record is guided by the genius of before, but not confined to it. As such, from the scorching “High Blood Pressure” to the disorienting bass-clarinet and soprano saxophone infused “Trippin’”, Cosmic Trip is a wild ride through not only the electronic-jazz music already heard but also hinting at those to come. The funky “Big Rumble” shakes the listener hard, while the more serene flute-driven “Subliminal” eases the tension. The result is especially inspiring when one finds out that Morrison was able to create such a plentiful sound while being somewhat hard of hearing. Given his impairment, one has to imagine that he, too, traded in personal comfort in favor of releasing art he felt the world needed to experience.

In listening to Cosmic Trip, it also becomes clear why Bill Laswell  was open to working on the record. As not only a bassist but also a producer, remixer, and composer, Laswell has forged a career of  obliterating genre concepts. Dub rhythms, funk grooves, ambient textures, and avant-garde free expression are all treated as coming from a unified source of sound, not disparate thoughts. Collaborations with people as sonically different as John Zorn, Afrika Bambaataa, and Whitney Houston all sit on a level playing field. That yearning for sonic openness is also evident throughout Cosmic Trip. Although by his own statements, Laswell’s contributions to the album are limited to adding only a few FX and mixing work, one cannot help but feel his touch in the record. In recent years, he has suffered from severe health issues that have included a rare blood infection, which causes chronic pain, breathing difficulties, and mobility problems. But he is still pushing through it all, still putting his genius into music even as it becomes more difficult. And we are all richer for it.

We sat down with both Morrison and Laswell to discuss the origins of Cosmic Trip and the voyage captured on the record.  In full disclosure, what you are about to read is composed of two separate conversations, set a few days apart, and one with each artist. Neither artist knows what the other said. Excerpts from the transcripts of both conversations have been edited and compiled to provide a larger overall arc to the piece.

PostGenre: Bill, you first learned of Sam through some live tapes you were working with of Miles Davis. Was this for Panthalassa or some other project?

Bill Laswell: It was for a new project, which is now finished. I’ve been, I guess you’d say, fighting with the estate to get it released. The music is so good.

As part of putting it together, I was listening to a tape of Miles’ band from 1974, and there was a strong saxophone solo on it. At first, I thought the solo was by Sonny Fortune. But saxophonist Peter Appelbaum heard it and thought it sounded like someone other than Sonny. He said it might be this guy, Sam Morrison, who had also played with Miles around that time. Sam had joined Miles in late 1974, right after Miles had returned from Japan.  And, based on Peter’s thought, I decided to try to find Sam Morrison and put the word out that I was looking for him. I knew nothing about Sam before I started trying to reach out to him. I had never honestly heard of him before. But I knew that I wanted to see him.

PG: Sam, were you familiar with Bill when he first started trying to find you?

Sam Morrison: Oh, yeah, I first heard about Bill around thirty-five years ago from [Japanese pianist Masabumi] Kikuchi. Kikuchi was a close friend of mine, and he also might have played a little with Miles after I did. But he was very well-known in Japan. Kikuchi knew Bill because Bill had taken over his loft in Brooklyn a long time back. So I knew who Bill was.

Ultimately, in Bill’s search for me, Yoko [Yamabe], Bill’s partner, friended me on Facebook. I wasn’t familiar with her when she did. But when I looked into who she was, I saw that she was associated with Bill and knew who he was.

BL: And when I finally talked to Sam, I told him that I was listening to Miles’ tape and asked if he recorded with Miles in the 70s. But he told me he never recorded with Miles. When Sam joined the band, he played only a couple of gigs before Miles went into retirement. Since he was in the band so briefly, Sam never formally recorded with Miles. So, it was Sonny Fortune on the recording. But I stayed in touch with Sam from then on.

PG: Did you two bond over your love of Miles’ music?

BL: No, I didn’t really talk about Miles so much with Sam. I was more interested in what he had been doing because I didn’t know much about him. He was in Japan for a while. And then I found out he had a band with Michael Shrieve and Patrick Gleeson. And that also put me in touch with Gleeson, who has always been a big influence on me. Anytime I use electronics, I always reference Patrick Gleeson.

PG: Sam, actually, you even have a trio recording coming out with your trio with Shrieve and Gleeson, correct?

SM: Sort of. It’s been in different states of development for the last six years. I don’t know where the album is going. Six years ago, we did a concert in Seattle, which we recorded but never released. Michael did a remix of one of the tracks and was going to release it, but I still haven’t heard anything further about when that will happen.

PG: Understood. But back to Cosmic Trip, when did conversations between the two of you turn into deciding to work on an album together?

BL: At some point, Sam told me he had a record that he wanted to finalize, mix, and release, and that he asked if I could help with it. I told him I would check out the music, and he sent it to me. We did a mix of what Sam sent me and I added some things, but nothing heavy. And, when we were finished, I gave it to him. He liked how it turned out, and we decided to release it.

PG: Sam, what interested you in having Bill work on the record instead of doing it all yourself?

SM: Well, with my hearing not being so great, I didn’t want to do final mixes on my own. I had mixed the record, but I preferredthat somebody else had a final say in getting the mixes correct. I was familiar with some of Bill’s recordings and thought it would be great to have him remix my music. I knew that he did a lot of remixing in addition to creating his own original music. He is a really great artist.  

BL: I was drawn to Sam’s music because it was different. I usually steer away from fusion in general. I also usually avoid working on records people make at home. Usually, a home recording just means the artist can’t afford a band or a studio. In this case, however, the programming and the rest was better than I expected. But it was Sam’s saxophone playing that came across very strongly to me. Stronger than most things I have heard in recent years, and I strongly felt that it needed to be heard by more people.

PG: What most sets Sam’s approach to the saxophone apart from others?

BL: Almost no one else today plays saxophone as strongly as Sam [Morrison] does. And we’re increasingly losing everyone who does. Wayne Shorter is gone. Pharaoh Sanders is gone. There just aren’t that many people with an incredibly strong tone on the saxophone anymore. I can’t think of too many saxophonists performing today who have such a strong sound.

PG: Well, he has a completely different sound, but you have worked with John Zorn often, and he certainly has a strong sound.

BL: Right, but John Zorn is the only one I can think of who has that kind of volume; someone who can play really loud and really clear.

And John’s different. He’s not a technical person when it comes to his sax. He definitely has musical technique, but his horn is not well-kept. He has probably used the same mouthpiece since he was in high school. People like Coltrane would have hundreds of mouthpieces and would buy different horns whenever they could. John’s horn is old. I think it’s from back when he was a teenager. But that horn gives him what he wants. His priority is a little beyond the obvious, I think, to create a kind of environment.  Again, John has that volume, but he’s one of the few who, like Sam, can play very loud, very strong, very clear, and articulate. Jazz people don’t do that.  

SM: Oh, that’s interesting. As far as my sound, when I was younger, I was very influenced by Coltrane. However, as I got older, Miles became more of an inspiration for me in terms of my line development. Most saxophonists are very focused on patterns that repeat. They’ll go off a certain way, whereas Miles’ runs were more linear. The focus is more on your ability to hear some lines and notes that you’re playing in your mind as opposed to repeating patterns. There is also the subtemporary transformation into a multiverse of different keys, and playing in one key in contrast to another key that somebody else plays over the rest of the band. I have a linear approach and a multiphonic universe.

PG: It is funny that you should both mention Coltrane. Miles once said Sam’s sound on the saxophone reminded him of Trane.

BL: I saw that too. And that kind of recommendation doesn’t happen every day.

SM: Miles didn’t tell me that. But apparently, he told other people.

PG: Towards the end of Trane’s life, he was still making acoustic music but was focusing on cosmic themes, with albums like Cosmic Music (Impulse!, 1968) and Interstellar Space (Impulse!, 1974) coming out after he had passed. This question is a little out of left field, but given the shared cosmic themes, do you think he might have made something like Cosmic Trip if he were still here today?

SM: I actually heard Trane live when I was fourteen years old. It was a very spiritual experience. But I don’t really know what he would be doing musically today. As you said, he only did acoustic music in his lifetime. I have no way of knowing whether he would explore electronic music the way Miles did. I feel my music is more an extension of Miles than Trane.

BL: Trane did go way out with recordings like Cosmic Music and Om (Impulse!,1968), but I think toward the end of his life, he started to do ballads again. He was never stuck in any one direction. I believe he would have continued to experiment and could have gone many different ways. He even tried to play guitar a little bit.

I don’t know where Trane would be today musically or what he would do. But I do know that as long as he was alive and able to be creative, he would be doing something different. I think Trane probably would have gone into areas that may have been a little too much for people. But in time, people catch up, and what they thought sounded weird twenty years ago might sound great to them twenty years later. Someone like Trane was always going to make something new and different. But, of course, he wasn’t here that long and didn’t have an opportunity to go for a long time.

Miles was here much longer. He brought his second quintet of the 1960s and moved into more electric elements. He graduated to this other music between 1969 and 1975. And then he was for about five years. And when he ultimately came back in the 1980s, he went into a whole other direction, which I didn’t really follow. To be honest, I kind of gave up on him. Around that time, Miles and I talked about doing something together, but I often forget about Miles’ music from the 80s and instead go back to his music from 69 to 75.

PG: Going back to Cosmic Trip, Sam, did you give Bill much guidance on how you wanted him to approach the material when he added to it, or did you give him free rein?

SM: I mostly gave him free rein because I know what he does. I’ve really always loved his music and the sound that he creates.

BL: I think you had some notes, but they didn’t specifically get into detail about what to do or not to. I think he mostly wanted to see what I would do myself and what I could bring to it.

If somebody’s dictating too much to you, you can’t bring anything. Sam let me do what I thought would work best. What I added was pretty minimal. I don’t take credit for much of what is on the record. All I did was clean it up and add a few things that enhanced the sound. I didn’t add any playing by anyone. I didn’t add music. It was just a sound project on my end.

PG: So, there wasn’t a parallel to something like Miles and Teo [Macero] on Bitches Brew (Columbia, 1969) where Miles recorded something and then Teo did a lot of manipulation in the studio after the fact?

BL: No, and most people don’t realize that Miles was working with Teo because of the label. Miles was on Columbia, and Teo was a house producer there, a top one who got handed all the hipper stuff and could choose what he wanted to work on. Teo was a tenor saxophone player who wanted to be a jazz musician but was never able to get it right. With Miles, he took a lot of liberties.  I think at that time, for many different reasons, Miles wasn’t heavily scrutinizing his records. He would do things rather quickly. Even from the beginning, Miles would make records pretty fast. He didn’t go in and give Teo notes on what to do or not to do. There was a tremendous amount of editing by Teo.

Miles wasn’t sitting in the studio with Teo, and the relationship between Miles and Teo is overrated. Miles didn’t really care about Teo at all. But had no choice because Teo was the house producer. It’s all about the label. And that’s why when Miles left Sony/Columbia to go to Warner, he didn’t bring Teo with him. That wasn’t how Sam and I worked, for many reasons.

PG: In terms of electronic music more generally, Sam, what started your voyage from saxophone into electronics?

SM: In early 1969, I took a course at Columbia University with Vladimir Ussachevsky, who was a pioneer of electronic music. I’d always wanted to do something with electronics since then. But I started getting deep into electronic music in the 70s by listening to musicians like Kraftwerk, Klaus Schulze, and Patrick Gleeson. My friend, Michael Shrieve, introduced me to a lot of that music. I was at Michael’s place when I met Klaus. And I met Patrick while recording with Michael in 1974 in San Francisco on what ended up being Michael’s unreleased Columbia record. By the mid-1980s, I bought a lot of synths. But I didn’t put together an album of electronic music until decades later, with Dark Matter (Brown Bag, 2012).

PG: What took so long for you to actually record electronic music?

SM: It became easier to organize structures once software like ProTools and Logic came out. It took a while for me to figure out how to do what I wanted, but the software ultimately caught up.

PG: In general, do you see Cosmic Trip as a one-off or the start of more projects together?

SM:  I would love to do more with Bill. But I don’t know if he would be able to or up for it. I have another project that’s ready for release. I don’t know exactly which label will release it.  There’s a chance it will be put out by someone else, but I would be happy to discuss it with Bill if he were interested. I am very happy we were able to do Cosmic Trip together.

BL: I’m open to whatever. I’m also very interested in Sam’s band with Shrieve and Patrick Gleeson.

PG: Bill, to go back to the beginning of our conversation, what else are you working on besides Cosmic Trip and the Miles Davis project you mentioned earlier?

BL: I’m not working all that much except for mixing and a lot of ambient music because I’ve been sick for a long time and can’t do much else. I’m not traveling or playing live. Right now, I am in a time of rewind in my brain and looking back at what I’ve done already. There is a lot of stuff coming out, and I think more and more will come out of the records I worked on long ago.

PG: You have a significant backlog waiting to be released.

BL: I do, yeah. It’s all about reimaging the whole thing and repackaging. I look forward to doing music that no one else would. No one has really gone very far from the approach of setting up a studio, putting up a microphone, and just playing. We haven’t really started the whole concept of what we call remixing. It has not happened yet. The recombinant world hasn’t opened the door yet. But it’s coming. I’m probably the only one who has done full album remixes of iconic musicians like Bob Marley, Miles Davis, Santana, Herbie [Hacock], and all that. I would like to continue that, and there’s quite a bit of music by Miles Davis that could be done with it too.

PG: Do you feel Artificial Intelligence will help you with remixing, or do you simply stay away from AI?

BL: I’m not staying away from AI at all. I think it’s incredible. I’m not using it, but it’s an incredible tool. It’s no different than an instrument. You need something good and strong to say to actually make it work for you. If you have that, AI is incredible. It can help fix things that will make you sound better. I don’t think anybody’s currently using it correctly in that way.

If you leave AI alone and let it move in its own way, which it will, then you can recognize it. If I hear a bass part, I can tell if it’s through an AI system. I can tell right away. AI is no different than anything else in music; there’s good and bad, and the line is all in how you use the tool. Musicians need to catch up to AI’s capabilities because they can do amazing things if used right. Nobody really has yet. But it doesn’t mean it won’t happen. The possibility is there. The field is wide open.

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‘Cosmic Trip’ is out now on M.O.D. Reloaded. It can be purchased on Bandcamp. More information on Bill Laswell can be found on the label’s website and more on Sam Morrison is available on his Facebook page.

Artwork credit: Yoko Yamabe