Prepare to be absolutely floored by the unorthodox sounds of jazz organist Larry Young. I first heard Young’s playing on a bootleg of him jamming in the studio with Jimi Hendrix. If you can hold your own with Jimi, you’ve got to have CHOPS and Young—sometimes called the “Coltrane of the organ”—had chops to spare. What sent me out (er…. to Google) to find this, though, was a reference in a Nick Cave interview where he was saying how he and the musicians in the Grinderman project had been grooving in the studio on Young’s monster of a song “Khadid of Space, Pt. 2 Welcome.” With a title like that—and knowing that Pharoah Sanders was all over this album—I just had to hear it. It did not disappoint. It’s a massive HUNK of music. Funky, psychedelic, both droning and jazzy simultaneously, it’s nothing shot of exhilarating and stunning. Look at the album cover. I’m a sucker for anything that even faintly reeks of Sun Ra-style Afro-Futurism and if you, too, are so inclined, you can thank me in the comments section.

“Lawrence of Newark” MP3