Is it fair to compare electronic musician Thomas Bangalter to impressionist composer Maurice Ravel? In a sense, absolutely. Ravel is one of history’s most celebrated classical music composers, specifically for the way he popularized the genre. With works like Boléro and Pavane pour un infante défunte, Ravel bridged the gap between general audiences and the elitist culture of classical music, pleasing both crowds without compromising artistic integrity. Similarly, Thomas Bangalter introduced niche, localized house music scenes to the global stage. As head of the now-defunct label Roulé, Bangalter created and cultivated some of the finest French house music of the ’90s; as half of the duo Daft Punk, Bangalter brought that same level of quality and craftsmanship around the world.
Of course, Bangalter and Ravel are similar mostly in generalities — there’s no mistaking a Ravel orchestral suite for a Daft Punk remix. But with his latest solo project Mythologies, a 90-minute ballet performed by the Bordeaux Aquitaine National Orchestra, Thomas Bangalter dives headfirst into classical music, thereby necessitating musical comparisons to the genre’s greatest composers. At times, Mythologies feels like a futuristic evolution for orchestral music; at times, the work feels beholden to some of the worst tropes and trends of classical music. But despite its flaws, Mythologies succeeds as an authentic expression of Thomas Bangalter’s passion for music and a triumphant comeback project.
Mythologies effectively combines characteristics of different eras of classical music in a way that makes the piece feel novel. Structurally, Mythologies is straight out of the early 20th century and bears a heavy resemblance to the works of Ravel. A relatively short ballet, it is stylistically similar to Daphnis et Chloé, but while ballet was organized into three tableaus, Mythologies is broken into 23 fragmented scenes. In a manner similar to Ravel’s Mother Goose suite and his orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, Mythologies thrives on the distinct identities created in each scene — even when he subverts expectations with musical characters that feel incongruous with the iconic mythological figures named in the scenes’ titles, such as in the subdued and mysterious “Zeus,” Thomas Bangalter excels at creating striking musical variety.
Despite its formal organization reminiscent of the Romantic era, the musical tone of Mythologies is closer to 20th-century trends of neoclassicism and minimalism. Bangalter leans heavily into standard Western harmonies, which gives Mythologies a safe, consonant sound. There are some great dissonant moments, like the climax of “Les Gorgones” and the Stravinsky-esque “Le Minotaure,” but overall, the ballet feels a little too unadventurous on the whole and grows stale in its last few scenes. Nearly every scene in Mythologies is in one of a handful of minor keys, meaning there are very few moments in the 90-minute work where the angst and tension dissipate to allow lighter emotions to emerge. Mythologies sometimes manages to achieve beauty within its simplistic harmonic framework — the B-minor opening scene introduces a gorgeous recurring nine-bar harmonic motif which is signified by its culminating suspension resolution into a half cadence. It’s a great moment that feels like it could be an excerpt taken from the B-minor symphonies of Schubert or Tchaikovsky, but it’s also a straightforward idea that lacks impact when it’s returned to later, such as in “Arès,” the 15th scene.
While Bangalter is largely reverent to the classical giants that came before him, Mythologies still occasionally runs into familiar pitfalls of classical music. The violin solo in “Le Minotaure” is fun, but its fast arpeggios are so quintessentially Philip Glass that the piece feels like a cheap imitation (or perhaps even a parody) of him. This is far from the work’s biggest misstep, however: Many of the piece’s quicker, more intense movements feel like b-roll Hans Zimmer material, due to their over-reliance on repeated single notes in the upper strings. Nothing took me out of Bangalter’s mythological narrative faster than feeling like I was watching the extended cut of a forgettable 2010s sci-fi movie, which is frustratingly how scenes like “Le Catch” and “Circonvolutions” made me feel. It’s a shame that Bangalter sometimes struggles to convincingly integrate repetitive ideas into Mythologies given how integral musical repetition was to the identity of Daft Punk.
Even though Mythologies isn’t a perfectly polished masterpiece, it’s a compelling musical statement by Thomas Bangalter, especially considering it’s his first large-scale musical release in nearly ten years. Listening to the entire album is a bit of a slog, but the standout scenes like “Treize Nuits” and “L’Accouchement” wouldn’t be as impactful outside of the context of the full work. Perhaps it isn’t fair to compare Thomas Bangalter to the legendary names of classical music, at least for now. But, with his musical celebration of ancient mythology, Bangalter still beautifully captures the creative essence of humanity from the perspective of a human-turned-robot-turned-human-again.
Senior Arts Editor Jack Moeser can be reached at jmoeser@umich.edu.