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 the 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.

“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,” says 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.”

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.

Photo Courtesy: Michael Hanano