J'aime Montparnasse 2000

In the lush, analog haze of late 1960s Paris — while the Left Bank rumbled with revolution and experimentalism — a quieter, stranger rebellion was unfolding behind studio doors. Montparnasse 2000 wasn’t a band, or even a label in the traditional sense. It was a shadowy library music collective, tucked into the weirder corners of the French avant-garde, quietly composing the soundtrack to a world that didn’t exist yet.

Long before it became sample fodder for Jay-Z, Kendrick Lamar, and J Dilla, the Montparnasse 2000 library was shaping the sonic fabric of 1970s Paris. A project with little commercial ambition, it trafficked in pure, genreless excess: wah-scorched funk, tape-warped psychedelia, modular synth freakouts, lush vocal harmonies, brass blasts, and epic breakbeats that all redrew the lines of what library music could be.

Founded in 1969 by a loose network of session musicians, producers, and composers drifting through the fertile French library scene — veterans of TeleMusic, Crea Sound, Sonimage, Patchwork, and CAM — Montparnasse 2000 specialized in what can only be described as fantasy music for the TV age: lounge-flecked jazz-funk, surreal synth odysseys, cosmic pop, and mutant strains of easy listening.

Composers like Janko Nilovic, Jean-Jacques Perrey, Camille Sauvage (aka Eric Framond), Jacky Giordano, and Guy Pedersen built entire soundworlds beneath the radar — crafting music meant to underscore French television, not fuel contemporary hip-hop. But decades later, the grooves hit differently. What once was background is now inspiration.

Because Montparnasse 2000 was never meant for mass consumption, original vinyl pressings remain deeply rare — coveted by crate diggers and hip-hop producers alike. Each record is a time capsule: snapshots of a future imagined in real-time, quietly shelved until now.

Today, Montparnasse 2000 feels less like an artifact and more like a prophecy. In an era where library music and high art are often intertwined, their uncanny, genre-agnostic experiments sound less like kitsch — and more like blueprints we’re finally catching up to.

APM Music is the exclusive source for sync and sample licensing of Montparnasse 2000 in the U.S. and Canada.

Listen to my favs at apmmusic.com

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Check out the MP2000 Discography

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