That Eric Alper

Step aboard the machine to stir-up the time i-330: the debut album by Flore Benguigui – former singer of L’Impératrice – and her band The Sensible Notes, to be released on March 13, 2026 via Decca Records France. Returning to the jazz that shaped her, Flore explores, alongside her musical partners, the great eras of jazz and French pop – from Nat King Cole to Barbara – blending timeless standards with forgotten gems. Her soft yet disarming voice unfolds in a universe where acoustic instruments converse with shimmering synthesizers, building bridges between past and present.

Listen now to their reinterpretation of “Didn’t I Tell You So?”, a little-known standard originally performed by the Nat King Cole Trio.

“Jazz is a very democratic musical form. It comes out of a communal experience. We take our respective instruments and collectively create a thing of beauty.” This quote from the legendary author of We Insist!, Max Roach, perfectly captures what unfolded during the making of Flore Benguigui’s (not quite) solo debut album, i-330.

It is the story of an artist reclaiming her creative power and sharing her love for a music that encourages emancipation. It is also the story of a dystopian science-fiction novel published in Russia in 1920 – at a time when jazz was thriving in America: We by Yevgeny Zamyatin. In a world where human beings are reduced to numbers in order to dissolve into the collective, the protagonist D-503 falls in love with a rebellious woman, I-330. It is no coincidence that Flore Benguigui pays tribute to her through a “machine to stir up time,” a retro-futuristic sonic device designed by the female architecture and scenography collective Atelier Hors Forme – and more specifically by her sister, Fanny.

As Flore sings in the introduction, this machine does not travel back in time – certainly not! – but rather blends eras into a singular yet familiar mixture. “It’s jazz, but it’s fun,” she announces in her instantly recognizable voice, while playing organ, dulcitone and Mellotron. For the first time, Flore single-handedly performs all the instrumentation on a composition she carried from start to finish. A clear indication of what follows: the meeting of “1930s songs and singing synthesizers,” a collision of eras forming a largely Anglo-Saxon repertoire in which Flore delights in unearthing hidden treasures… only to reinvent them.

The journey began on the stage of Le Baiser Salé, where she has performed with her band for eleven years – a second home for the singer. Between arena tours with L’Impératrice, she found her breath again in this intimate venue cherished by jazz lovers. Then came Studio Pigalle: in the summer of 2025, twelve tracks were recorded live over five days, answering a need for sonic spontaneity and embracing rough edges and imperfections. Surrounded by upright and grand pianos, synthesizers and vintage microphones, Flore healed the wounds left by a demanding chapter with L’Impératrice. She was joined by a team with contagious energy, embodying the most joyful and accessible side of jazz. “Just because you play jazz doesn’t mean you have to be cerebral or elitist,” Flore emphasizes. “This album is the exact opposite – it was made with joy and kindness.”

She is joined by three long-time companions: Pierre-François Maurin (double bass), Charles Tois (piano) and Maxime Mary (drums). Rozann Béziers handles trombone and brass arrangements. Julie Varlet plays trumpet, Jeanne Michard shines on tenor saxophone, and Aurélie Tropez on clarinet. Mixing and mastering were handled by Jennifer Gros (Voyou, Jade, Lenny Kravitz), Marie Pieprzownik and Bénédicte Schmitt. Production and synthesizers are by English musician Nicky Green. Add graphic designer Clara Vallino and stylist Lola Dubas, and the team is predominantly female – still rare enough to be worth noting. Together, this joyful tribe forms The Sensible Notes – a reference to the major seventh, a tension note frequently used in jazz to color chords and call for resolution. In French, this interval is called a note sensible – a term that does not exist in English, where “sensible” means “reasonable.” And if there is one music that escapes rationality, it is jazz: a boundless territory constantly demanding exploration, reinvention and freedom. Something Flore fully embraces.

Drawing from swing as much as bebop, blurring analog and synthetic lines, and infusing pop energy into sometimes century-old compositions, i-330 breathes new life into these songs. The album features jazz and soul divas such as Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday and Dionne Warwick. The raw vulnerability of Chet Baker appears in Blue Room and in an Everything Happens to Me twisted through a vocoder. We also dance to echoes of Nat King Cole and linger in the shadow of Benny Goodman. The tone is set early with More Understanding Than a Man, a mischievous feminist track by Margo Guryan. Traumatized by tours with trombonist Bob Brookmeyer – once her husband – Guryan crafted her music in a DIY spirit. With this song, Flore returns “to the river,” as Guryan put it, toward a safe place she longed for. When she sings Barbara’s words over a minimalist backdrop, she feels them down to her spine:
“I will take the road again, the world amazes me / I’ll warm myself beneath another sun.” At the heart of the album lies La Chanson de Simon from Les Demoiselles de Rochefort, a film that obsessed Flore as a child and which she now reinterprets, drifting away from the original lyrics to let melodic emotion take over.

Melodic emotion… Beyond the deeply feminist DNA of an artist engaged for years against all odds, these two words could define every track on i-330. “Listening to an album from start to finish has become an almost militant act,” Flore Benguigui notes. But listening to this one also means retreating, for twelve tracks, into a groovy yet poetic space-time where nothing else matters – except the vibration of our feelings, so often bruised.

Tracklist

1. i-330 Machine à remuer le temps (Flore Benguigui)
2. More Understanding Than A Man (Margo Guryan)
3. What A Little Moonlight Can Do (Harry M. Woods)
4. Everything Happens To Me (Matt Dennis & Tom Adair)
5. Didn’t I Tell You So?(Unknown)
6. Dis, quand reviendras-tu ? (Barbara)
7. The Blue Room (Lorenz Hart & Richard Rodgers)
8. Goody Goody (John Herndon Mercer & Matt Malneck)
9. Riffin’ At The Bar-B-Q (Nat King Cole)
10. Chanson de Simon(Jacques Demy / Michel Legrand)
11. Till Then (Eddie Seiler, Sol Marcus, Guy Wood)
12. Louisiana Fairy Tale (Haven Gillespie, Mitchell Parish, J. Fred Coots)