Thomas Bangalter announces Mirage, a minimalist ballet soundtrack album

Thomas Bangalter has announced Mirage, a 16-track album due June 5, and the first extract, Mirage: Part II, arrived on April 24 with Bangalter credited for production, composition and all instruments. For minimal techno listeners, the tell is not the name alone, but the method: this project treats reduction as structure, using space, repetition and pressure as the engine rather than building toward club-scale release.

Mirage is the soundtrack to an eponymous ballet conceived by Damien Jalet and Kōhei Nawa, and several sources identify the full work as Mirage - Ballet for 16 Dancers. The ballet premiered at the Grand Théâtre de Genève in May 2025, with performances on May 6, 7 and 9, plus an additional date on May 11, and the theatre lists it as a 60-minute piece without intermission. The venue also flagged nudity and stroboscopic light patterns, which places the score inside an immersive stage environment instead of a conventional concert-format release.

That context matters because Bangalter’s new material is rooted in electronic minimalism inspired by Iannis Xenakis. The comparison to minimal techno is immediate but not literal: this is not a DJ tool, and it is not trying to recreate the grid of a warehouse set. It is closer to a cousin language, where compression and restraint create motion, and where a small number of musical elements can carry enormous tension over time. In that sense, Mirage looks like adjacent inspiration rather than celebrity art-world drift.

Jalet has said Mirage is his first creation for the Ballet du Grand Théâtre and the fourth chapter of his collaboration with Nawa, following VESSEL in 2016, Planet[wanderer] in 2021 and Mist in 2022. That history helps explain why Mirage reads less like a one-off prestige commission and more like a continuation of an established interdisciplinary line between choreography, sculpture and sound.

Bangalter’s post-Daft Punk path gives the release even more weight. His earlier solo orchestral work, Mythologies, was commissioned by choreographer Angelin Preljocaj, and Warner Classics says it was filmed at Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris with the Orchestre de Chambre de Paris. Presto Music described that score as 23 scenes drawn from Baroque music and American minimalism. In 2024, he also released CHIROPTERA MATIERE PREMIERE, a long-form work that pushed even further away from conventional album logic.

Taken together, those projects show a clear pattern: Bangalter keeps using minimalist ideas as a compositional tool that can move between dance, installation and orchestral settings. Mirage fits that trajectory and, for the minimal techno crowd, offers a useful reminder that the scene’s core values, repetition, tension and controlled release, still travel well beyond the club.