French-Algerian trumpeter based in Switzerland, Shems Bendali develops a narrative and sensitive music, nourished by jazz and Algerian musical traditions. At the head of his quintet, he shapes a personal language where memory and imagination merge and resonate with one another.
His new album unfolds in a science-fiction universe set between the Maghreb and the Middle East, inspired by the aesthetics of futuristic graphic novels. It takes the listener to hear the whisper of desert sand grains and to feel a breeze high among the skyscrapers. More than a story, it is a sonic lore, a unique fictional setting serving as the backdrop for evocative compositions—sometimes intimate, sometimes contemplative.
The album features singer Climène Zarkan and oud player Amine Mraihi on a track with Arab-Andalusian colors, converging into a celestial, singular, and powerful creation, rooted in a thousand-year-old tradition.
Through his music, Shems Bendali explores a plural identity, between the West where he lives and the Maghreb he comes from. Like Amin Maalouf before him, he refuses to choose between his inheritances: instead, he turns them into a space for creation, questioning, and beauty.
