Formula Indie Sessions – Interview with S!NGE
S!NGE is a five-piece experimental rock band formed in Fribourg, Switzerland, in September 2025: Ezio on vocals, Aydan on guitar, Jules on bass, Nicolas on guitar, synths, trumpet and backing vocals, and Benoît on drums and drum machine. Their sound layers shoegaze haze over post-grunge grit: think Radiohead and Sonic Youth colliding with Led Zeppelin.
1.Whatis your earliest memory connected to music? Ezio: Listening to The Wall by Pink Floyd with my dad in the car when I was six.
Jules: Probably singing along to a song by a French pop-rock band I was completely in love with when I was three.
Aydan: My dad giving me a goofy toy radio with two CDs: Primus and a techno compilation. I was seven.
Benoît: My dad playing “Billie Jean” in the living room while he, my sister and I danced and jumped on the furniture, even though we were never allowed to.
Nicolas: One specific moment: my dad and I were driving to the recycling centre in his old car. He was playing “T.N.T.” byAC/DC and I was singing along, and he was amazed. I honestly think that’s my very first memory.
2. How did your passion for creating music begin?
Ezio: It really began with S!NGE. Before that, I didn’t write anything of my own; I only sang other people’s songs. With S!NGE, I discovered a whole new world: making music from scratch.
Jules: The first time I stepped on stage. The feeling was perfect, the best you can have on earth. Within a few seconds, I knew this would be my whole life.
Aydan: Two years after that toy radio, my dad gave me a Squier Mini and lessons with a friend of his. No theory, just guitar.
Benoît: I’ve always loved listening to music, and at some point ideas started sticking in my head. That turned into an urge to create something new.
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Formula Indie Sessions — S!NGE Interview Answers
Nicolas: It didn’t start at one precise moment; it bloomed gradually. I started on the piano without even knowing how to play, then moved on to anything that could make a sound. I’ve always loved playing with sounds and instruments, even the ones I didn’t know how to play.
3.What’s the story behind your current music project?
At its core, S!NGE started with Aydan, Ezio and Nicolas, who are childhood friends. For a while, Aydan was the only one of us playing in a band. Then one day we went to one of Ezio and Benoît’s school concerts: not only had Ezio learned to sing, he was genuinely good, and Benoît was already the GOAT. One date, one place and a first rehearsal were enough to convince us.
Later, after a few shows, Jules joined us on bass, taking over from Nico, who now focuses on guitar, synths, trumpet and more.
4. How would you describe your sound to someone who has never heard your music before?
Ezio: A dense sonic world of saturated guitars, analog keys, crazy beats, energetic bass and trumpet, carried by a voice that swings from a whisper to a torn scream, layered with effects.
Jules: Curious music that feeds on everything it finds and breathes young energy into it, modernising older influences and bringing them up to date. Creation without barriers, straight from the imagination of people who live for music.
Aydan: Post-grunge.
Benoît: Our sound is quite varied; right now it sits broadly within alternative rock. But S!NGE can be and sound like whatever it wants, because every member writes demos for new tracks, except maybe Ezio, who writes the lyrics.
Nicolas: You have to think outside the box and be open to something new and unusual. Our name, S!NGE, actually describes our music pretty well: it’s a very simian kind of music, intelligent but still wild. There’s something experimental and unpredictable about it, but there’s also a lot of thought behind what we do.
5.Whatis one thing you’ve learned that completely changed the way you make music?
Ezio: That making music is really fun.
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Formula Indie Sessions — S!NGE Interview Answers
Jules: To open my mind to every genre of music, and to figure out what I like and dislike in each of them.
Aydan: That we’re not a professional football club.
Benoît: My head is usually chaotic and full of ideas, so I’ve learned to start from a single idea and build on it instead of juggling many. Most of the time, the simple, refined stuff is what slaps! I’ve also learned to sketch out a song’s overall structure whenever I make a demo. And to just write: most ideas are good, even when they don’t feel like it.
Nicolas: No single thing changed our process overnight. What has changed is that, over time, we’ve learned the whole “game” around music: playing shows, organising things, managing a project and understanding how everything works behind the scenes.
Personally, I’ve also learned a lot about music itself: guitar effects, recording, capturing tracks properly, and all the technical side of things. When we started, we didn’t even realise we’d have to think about any of that.
6.Whattools, instruments, or software are essential in your creative process?
Ezio: My mic, my notebook and sometimes my effects pedals.
Jules: My bass, my amp and a drive pedal. That’s all I use when I create. Aydan: Since I’m often the only guitarist, my effects pedals. Absolutely essential.
Benoît: Mainly Logic Pro X and the guitar. Logic lets me hear how a whole song could sound, but lately I find the guitar more exciting, because I never know how an idea will sound once the band plays it. From there I shape the structure, energy, arrangement and length, and the song also takes form around Ezio’s lyrics, since the music has to adapt to them.
Nicolas: Honestly, not much. Apart from our instruments and the gear we record them with, we don’t rely on any particular software. Sometimes, when I’m composing, I’ll record a basic riff or chord progression into a DAW and send it to the others, but most ideas start directly on our instruments. We like keeping the process simple.
7.Which indie artist or song are you loving right now? Ezio: “Teleharmonic” by The Smile.
Jules: Last Train.
Aydan: Radiohead’s album A Moon Shaped Pool.
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Formula Indie Sessions — S!NGE Interview Answers
Benoît: Arctic Monkeys’ “If You Were There, Beware,” and really the whole Favourite Worst Nightmare album. Also “Tunic (Song for Karen)” by Sonic Youth. There are so many more, and I love drawing inspiration from very different kinds of music.
Nicolas: Satine. Her latest project is incredible: you can really feel how much of herself she puts into her music, and I love that. Rhythmically and compositionally, I think it’s exceptional. It’s also very different from what I usually listen to, which makes it even more interesting. She’s exactly the kind of artist I can learn from, and I’m sure she’ll inspire some of my next songs.
8. How have your personal experiences influenced your music and artistic vision?
Ezio: My own experiences, and the way I see what’s happening around me, are the main influences on my music and lyrics. In our songs, I try to turn what I’ve lived through into situations anyone can relate to, or to use metaphors to talk about the things that upset me.
Jules: My anger at the system and at what’s happening in the world shapes my music. I like to call things out and spit my rage into it; it’s how I let it out. I don’t draw on my private life, though: for now, I can’t really translate what I feel inside into music.
Aydan: I love live music, especially when it goes hard. So I try to mix beauty and softness with filth and noise to create movement.
Benoît: What I’ve noticed in the music industry (and I’m barely in it) is that people expect you to be something and put you in a category that already exists. I try to push back against that, because every artist is unique, and we can be too!
Nicolas: Our personal experiences are probably the biggest influence on our music. Everything comes from what we feel, and that’s what we try to convey through both our music and our lyrics. Our emotions and experiences shape the way we create and the artistic direction we take.
9.What emotions or messages do you hope listeners take from your work?
Ezio: I hope they feel understood, and that it makes them think.
Jules: That our system is rotten, selfishness rules, and we need to put humanity back at the centre of our world.
Aydan: Whatever they want.
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Formula Indie Sessions — S!NGE Interview Answers
Benoît: I hope they feel safer, welcome in the world we’re sharing with them, and emotionally moved.
Nicolas: I just want people to feel what we put into our music. If we pour everything into a nostalgic song, I want the listener to feel nostalgic too; if we make something joyful, I want them to feel that joy. More than anything, I want them to connect with what we felt when we wrote the song, and to understand what we’re trying to say.
10.What’s the mostimportantlesson music has taught you so far? Ezio: Being kind to people always brings something good back.
Jules: Don’t judge people. Take inspiration from everybody, even those who seem worse than you.
Aydan: Consistency and fun: that’s the way.
Benoît: Music is always political. It’s important to use your platform to support oppressed people, in Palestine, Sudan, Congo and elsewhere, and to stand against oppressors: autocrats, idiotic billionaires, sexual abusers…
Nicolas: Make your music, be yourself, and don’t worry too much about what other people think. That’s how your music becomes authentic. Music reflects the person making it, so you have to embrace who you are and be comfortable with it.
That’s also why I’m excited to see how our music evolves. It has to evolve as we do: if our music never changed, it would probably mean we weren’t changing either.
11.Whatis a dream venue or festival you would love to perform at? Ezio: Any venue full of crazy people.
Jules: The Olympia in Paris, and Paléo.
Aydan: I’ve already played my dream show: opening for Festival du Gibloux at Fri-Son.
Benoît: Any venue can be incredible. I’d love to play in front of a massive crowd, just because I’ve never done it!
Nicolas: Definitely Paléo or Montreux Jazz Festival. They’re my two favourite festivals, and they’re both in Switzerland, which makes them even more special to me. I love the atmosphere at Montreux, and Paléo is simply legendary. The day I play Paléo, I think I’ll be able to look back and say, “Okay, I’ve really built a career in music.”
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Formula Indie Sessions — S!NGE Interview Answers
12.If you could collaborate with any artist, past or present, who would it be and why?
Ezio: Jonny Greenwood. I love his unconventional guitar playing, his creative use of effects, and his writing for string ensembles.
Jules: Damon Albarn.
Aydan: Frank Zappa, for his incredible creativity and authenticity.
Benoît: Björk or Kate Bush. I’d also love to team up with a dance group on a joint project!
Nicolas: Nirvana: Kurt Cobain, Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic. I feel like we’d get along really well; I can picture us writing music together, having fun, drinking a few beers and just messing around. I love their energy and mindset, which I think would fit really well with ours, and I feel we share important values, especially around feminism and social and political issues.
13.Where can our listeners follow and support your music? Everything (Spotify, Instagram and more) is linked here: linktr.ee/S1NGE
14. Looking toward the future, what’s your dream for the next chapter of your musical journey?
Ezio: Enough success to focus only on music, to stay creatively free, and to share our music with more people.
Jules: To tour in big cities all around Europe.
Aydan: To leave our small Swiss town and go on tour.
Benoît: Playing live, rocking hard and making people go crazy. Releasing our upcoming EP, then an album. Composing, rehearsing… so many things!
Nicolas: My dream would be for S!NGE to spend three weeks somewhere like a chalet, living together while we write and record an album from start to finish: around ten tracks, with a real concept and a story running through the whole thing, so every song leads into the next like an epic journey. More than anything, I’d love to make a true concept album in that kind of immersive setting, where we can focus completely on the music.
15.What do you hope listeners will discover about you along the way?
Ezio: Our passion.
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Formula Indie Sessions — S!NGE Interview Answers
Jules: That Switzerland has great talent too!
Aydan: That “S!NGE” means “monkey” in French.
Benoît: I don’t know. I think we’re still discovering ourselves too.
Nicolas: That we’re nothing more than five passionate guys doing our best.
