After a two-year wait, Thomas Bangalter has released ‘Mythologies’, his first solo venture since Daft Punk.
This lush 90 minute work of orchestral finesse is based on the original ballet score for Angelin Preljocaj’s composition bearing the same name and was performed by none other than Romain Dumas’ very own Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine. Last week saw Warner Music publishing select pieces from Mythologies titled ‘L’Accouchement’ and ‘Le Minotaure’.
In light of this exciting debut release, Bangalter made an unprecedented move with personal interviews to promote it instead of relying solely on veiled Daft Punk promotion as before – making this launch all that more special!
In a recent conversation with Classical Connections Radio, Bangalter discussed his journey of creating an orchestral score for the ballet project – something he had never done before. Gone were the usual electronic production hardware; in its place was a complex fusion of musical styles that formed just one part of ‘Mythologies”s success story.
“I went back to two worlds. My mother was a ballet dancer so my childhood was surrounded with a dancing class, choreographers and dancers. So this was definitely somehow known territory, even though I ended up doing dance music of a different kind,” he told host Alexis Ffrench. “But it was a very intimate and personal project for sure, to go back in this process. Also I think I’m looking at scoring and writing for the orchestra in a very cinematic way too, because I just love movies and I think my relationship, even to classical proposals, is very well-connected to its use in films.”
“…My process is very instinctive,” he said. “At the same time this project was my first adventure in orchestration myself. I was just experimenting and trying different textures and working with some classical forms and also some less traditional forms as well.”
In another interview with BBC, Bangalter opened up about the end of Daft Punk and the intention of their famous robot characters. “We tried to use these machines to express something extremely moving that a machine cannot feel, but a human can,” Bangalter told Mark Savage. “We were always on the side of humanity and not on the side of technology…. As much as I love this character, the last thing I would want to be, in the world we live in, in 2023, is a robot.” Read more from the interview here.
‘Mythologies’ is Bangalter’s first full-length solo project since Daft Punk split up in February 2021. His only other solo album is also a score, for the 2002 Gaspar Noé film ‘Irréversible’. As Daft Punk, Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo scored the 2010 ‘Tron: Legacy’ film, which later got a special remix edition.