From playing snare drum on Anzac Day in his small rural town, to beating the bass drum in the Opera House for “Do you hear the people sing?”, music has been a way to get away to reinvent from his roots.

When he started at Sydney Uni in 1995 Nigel Hoffmann followed a penchant for Bukowski, Hunter S Thompson and Kurt Vonnegut into the first terrace-house rehearsals of the screaming high-brow hardcore of Melma Hydrogen, featuring Corin Bone and Martin Crawley and a young impressionable Serge Stanley. Fans of Melma’s ‘style’ soon included Serge’s mates David and James Stephenson, and a gritty Dirk Kruithof, who filled on bass occasionally. After Troy Scerri left to play real haircore, Serge invited his friend Marko to play bass synth, and after a few wild gigs, Melma recorded their album at Big Jesus Burger studios with Chris Townsend, and released their only album ‘Help You’, launched at the infamous 61 Regent St.

After travelling, he was soon distracted to play dub disco with Thunderworm, a loose collective of Annandale musos. After many 4-track experiments, longnecks and fruitless rehearsals, Thunderworm was refined to Nigel and Unique Gene (Eugene Phang) on bass. They met and began jamming with MC Wire (Will Jarret) and Stingray (Jade Wilson) at Yabun on Invasion Day 2003, and then continued to jam across from Newtown Station at The Hub.

Nigel joined Waiting for Guinness after hearing Riff-Raff in Serge’s Walker St loungeroom in September 2002.