Mythologies is a full-length score conceived for a ballet of the same name and composed by Thomas Bangalter, known around the world as a member of Daft Punk, the influential French electronic music duo. With Daft Punk, Bangalter fused funk, disco, rock and pop. Here, he again breaks down musical barriers: Mythologies, his first orchestral work, embraces idioms from the Baroque to modern American minimalism. Its movements have names like ‘Zeus’, ‘The Gorgons’, ‘Aphrodite’ and ‘Funeral Dance’.

Ballet, like music, is in Bangalter’s blood. His mother was a ballet dancer, his father a songwriter and producer; and he was taught piano as a child by a music staff member at the Paris Opéra. “With electronic music, it’s so hard and it takes so much time to infuse emotion in the machines,” he told the New York Times. “So to write a chord or a melody and have the performers — human beings — play it and have this instant emotional quality to it, is really quite exhilarating.”

Mythologies is billed as exploring “contemporary rituals and the founding myths that shape the collective imagination”. It was premiered in 2022 as a collaboration between the Ballet de l'Opéra National de Bordeaux and the Ballet Preljocaj (led by the French choreographer Angelin Preljocaj, who invited Bangalter to create the score). Mythologies is performed on this world premiere recording by the Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine under conductor Romain Dumas.