Rythmes Contemporains

While Editions Montparnasse 2000 was a library label, you could be forgiven for thinking they were in a more avant-garde future-pop business: not only did they release albums by electronic music innovator Jean-Jacques Perrey and film score / library music titan Piero Umiliani (of “Mah Na Mah Na” fame), they cultivated the career of their own in-house composer Janko Nilović, who spent much of the ’70s pushing the boundaries of what could possibly constitute “music for commercial purposes.” Rythmes Contemporains sounds like a mid-’70s action film big-band score having gained sentience, broken free from the celluloid to sprawl into its own unpredictable narrative.