| Poking fun at the sometimes pretentiousness of the California music scene, guitarist and vocalist Jake Nuffer spawns his latest solo project NUFFER. Throwing his technical training in classic jazz guitar out the window, NUFFER takes a stab at the pleasing melodies and exaggerated experimentation of his own brand of indie-rock with today’s release of “Big Brain.” Having spent more than a decade honing his guitar chops and lending his talents to other musicians, NUFFER has built up quite the body of work. Now stepping into a solo era, “Big Brain” creates a mesmerizing dissonance between a world class education in jazz guitar and dropping out of school to fall back in love with rock music. LISTEN TO “BIG BRAIN” PRE-SAVE A-OK WATCH THE VISUALIZER FOR “BIG BRAIN” “Shortly after I dropped out of college, I had a dinner conversation where I was told that the only way I could achieve happiness would be through a college degree,” said NUFFER. “But when I looked around the table, all I saw were a bunch of people who had followed this traditional path and ended up nihilistic and lost in their own life, leading to the line ‘if I got a degree maybe, I could lose any reasoning.’ ‘Big Brain’ is about defying those traditional expectations and focusing on a pursuit of what makes me happy.”  Press photo by Michael Hanano On August 16, NUFFER will unveil his debut EP titled A-OK. The tongue-in-cheek project is a brazen commentary on the state of music today. In a world of three-chord songs-of-the-Summer, NUFFER borrows the earworm elements of these hits and adds them to his experimental, technical knowledge of how to manipulate sound. A-OK holds a lens to masochism and self-depreciation, while trying to shake the concept that a person has to be one-dimensional. Taking inspiration from his older brother, rock icons over the decades, and a generation shaped by Guitar Hero, NUFFER (Jake Nuffer) first picked up the guitar and joined a handful of San Diego lcover bands at the age of 12. With his passion ignited by nights ended too early after getting kicked out of the bar, he dedicated his young life to the study of jazz guitar. Fascinated by the tension and release of jazz music, NUFFER spent years practicing niche and extremely nerdy fusion guitar licks from John Scofield, Oz Noy, listening to 70s samba fusion jazz, and other self-proclaimed “not very cool things.” He wound up at New York’s School of Jazz at The New School, where he spent three years getting an intense education. Once he started to feel that music no longer felt fun for him, NUFFER decided to drop out and dive back into playing live shows, the thing that first developed his love for his craft. After being asked to join the band Fashion Jackson, he spent the next era of his career touring the country and learning to unlearn the uptight intellectualism of guitar. During the pandemic, NUFFER shifted to his solo project while continuing to lend his talents in the studio and on stage to the likes of UMI’s critically acclaimed Introspection Reimagined, sessions with DJ Dahi, and performances at Red Rocks with Victoria Canal. Now with the focus on his own project, NUFFER will be releasing his debut solo EP A-OK on August 16. For more information on NUFFER, please visit: Instagram / Spotify / Soundcloud / Twitter / TikTok |
NUFFER kicks off new solo era with supercharged and dissonant “Big Brain”
