Having closed out last year with some pretty stellar releases from Áine O'Dwyer, Catherine Christer Hennix, and The Shadow Ring, Blank Forms returns with not only one of the most exciting releases of 2024 so far, but what is easily among their most historically important efforts in their already incredible catalog of historically significant work: the first ever reissue of Atrás del Cosmos' "Cold Drinks, Hot Dreams". The lone release, originally issued in a tiny cassette edition in 1980, by what has been considered to be Mexico’s first free jazz ensemble - the trio of pianist Ana Ruiz, saxophonist Henry West, and percussionist Evry Mann, with an expanded line-up to include bassist Claudio Enriquez - it's a towering work of free and spiritual jazz by one of the most influential groups working in Mexico City during the late 1970s and early 80s - known for their association with Don Cherry and fostering an entire generation of improvisors - that entirely rewrites what we thought we knew.

Over the last few years, we’ve found ourselves with no shortage of praise for the New York based curatorial platform, publisher, and record label Blank Forms. Almost entirely unique in the landscape of experimental art and sound, they’ve brought forth a vast range of material at a startling pace - archival and contemporary texts and music - as well as presenting concerts, exhibitions, and talks. Central to the initiative’s output is their label, which since launching in 2017 has delivered groundbreaking releases by Charlemagne Palestine, Don Cherry, Catherine Christer Hennix, Maryanne Amacher, Judith Hamann, and numerous others, doing a remarkable job of building bridges between various idioms of experimental practice, embracing both their historical and contemporary realisations. While multiculturalism has always been part of this pursuit, the majority of Blank Forms’ output has focused on the work of artists from Europe, the United States, and Japan, making their latest, Atrás del Cosmos’ “Cold Drinks, Hot Dreams” - the first LP to have ever been dedicated to what has been considered to be Mexico’s first free jazz ensemble - an incredibly exciting and historically significant event.

The history of avant-garde and experimental music in Mexico is a shadowy world. While incredibly rich and enduring, beginning with composers like Julián Carrillo - credited as the first to reintroduce just-intonation into Western Classical music - and continuing into the present, for decades, following events like the Tlatelolco massacre in 1968 and Avándaro festival - often referred to as the Mexican Woodstock - in 1971, the country’s government heavily restricted music that could be perceived to threaten the status quo, making it incredibly hard for progressively minded artists to perform and record, which ultimately played a heavy hand in Mexico’s rich history of radical sonic creativity becoming almost impossible to access without considerable work.

Blank Form’s latest, Atrás del Cosmos’ “Cold Drinks, Hot Dreams”, takes a considerable step toward pushing back the veil and reveals a seminal part of a history that, while known by many Mexicans, has remained almost entirely obscure beyond the country’s borders. Atrás del Cosmos is widely regarded as the first free jazz ensemble to have been active in Mexico. Founded in 1975 by pianist Ana Ruiz, saxophonist Henry West, and percussionist Evry Mann, the trio was a central force in Mexico City’s creative arts community over the course of its eight year run until 1983, often expanding the line up to include a rotating cast of artists, and mentoring an entire generation of improvisers in the city via their activities and legendary weekly performances at El Galeón theater. Tragically, despite their association with Don Cherry, who invited the group to play and instruct on his organic approach to music and improvisation, and respectable levels of recognition across Mexico, the group remained almost entirely unknown internationally and were only rarely offered the opportunity to record. At the time of their disbandment in 1983, they had only released a single cassette, entitled “Cold Drinks, Hot Dreams”, one of the rarest holy grails in Mexican avant-garde music.

“Cold Drinks, Hot Dreams” captures Atrás del Cosmos five years into their eight year run, performing live in 1980, with the core line-up of Ana Ruiz on piano, Henry West on saxophone, and Evry Mann on drums and percussion, expanded to include the double-bassist Claudio Enriquez. The album’s six pieces roughly split the difference between hard driving free jazz fire - resonating deeply with the contemporaneous efforts and sounds then emerging from New York’s loft jazz scene - driven by Ruiz’s percussive hand on the piano, Mann’s broad palette of textures and polyrhythms, and West’s howling horn - on the pieces “Cold Drinks”, “M.D.”, and “Hot Dreams”, while the remaining three, “Clapping Hand II”, “Hanne IV”, and “What Reason / Clapping Hand I / Baba” dive toward a spiritual jazz sensibility that nods toward the corpus connect with Don Cherry and the great trumpet player’s notions of Organic Music.

Captivating and diverse across the length of its two sides, “Cold Drinks, Hot Dreams” is a propellant universe of sound and real-time creativity that not only reveals one of the most vital, but little known groups working in the idiom of free jazz during the late 1970s and early 80s, but opens a crucial window onto a sinfully neglected world within the Latin American avant-garde during this era. Highly important on historical terms and creatively engrossing in all of its singularities, once again Blank Forms has changed the game and produced some of the most important work we can call to mind.