Phil Pirrone is a Los Angeles-based musician and co-founder of Desert Daze. After spending the previous decade of his life as a touring bassist, Pirrone borrowed and SG and DL4 and began his exploration of writing and recording looped-based music with jjuujjuu back in 2011.
Pirrone’s jjuujjuu debut, 2013’s FRST EP and the follow-up, one-off single “Bleck” helped to build up some early buzz around the project. In the project’s earliest days, the lineup and instrumentation moved in step with Pirrone’s ethos of ephemera and flux: the project would turn in several different configurations with Pirrone at the center.
Building upon a growing profile, Pirrone and company shared stages with a number of nationally and internationally known acts, including The Claypool Lennon Delirium, Tortoise, Allah-Lahs, Temples, Tinariwen and a list of others.
Pirrone spent the next few years recording material in various spaces around California. Those sessions included collaborations with Vinyl Williams, members of Lumerians, Dahga Bloom and a list of others. The material from those sessions eventually comprised Pirrone’s jjuujuu full-length debut, 2018’s Zionic Mud. The album was accompanied by alternate versions of its tracks remixed or reimagined by many of the band’s most notable fans and supporters, including J. Mascis, Warpaint‘s jennylee, Liars, METZ, and Autolux. JJUUJJUU supported the album by opening for Primus, Mastodon, Kikagaku Moyo, and Earhtless, as well as festival sets at Pickathon, Nelsonville, M3F and others.
During the height of the pandemic, Pirrone taught himself how to produce and record material and sent tracks to longtime bandmembers and collaborators Ian Gibbs and Joseph Assef. Those tracks were sent to a collection of talented friends that included METZ’s Alex Edkins and JOVM mainstays Boogarins and a lengthy list of others.
Pirrone and company started off the year with “SOME,” a collaboration with acclaimed Brazilian psych rock outfit and JOVM mainstays Boogarins. Built around a hypnotic motorik groove and layers of swirling and howling feedback and reverberated distortion. Boogarins added a dreamy bridge and vocals that seem that oscillating between English and their native Brazilian Portuguese, which gives the song a dreamy, psilocybin-fueled, hallucinogenic air.
Tracked remotely between Los Angeles and Brazil between 2020-2021, Pirrone says: “We sent the track to Boogarins, who added a really beautiful bridge to the song, and vocals oscillating between English and Portuguese. Something in this song recalls early childhood memories of Muppet Babies or Elton John ‘Benny and the Jets’… but in a really weird (but good) way. End result feels like a flower dancing on the sand under a São Paolo sun.”
To celebrate the project’s debut at Coachella, Pirrone shares the latest jjuujjuu single “Up To You.” Anchored around swirling and shimmering feedback-driven guitar textures, a sinuous and propulsive bass line paired with wobbling layers of percussion, the song’s arrangement serves as a lush yet subtly uneasy bed for Pirrone’s reverb-drenched and dreamily yearning delivery to add to the psilocybin fueled haze.
Along with the new single, Pirrone and company announced a series of post-Coachella dates with A Place to Bury Strangers that includes a May 31, 2024 stop at Music Hall of Williamsburg, as well as festival circuit appearances at Barcelona’s Primavera Sound Festival, Electric Forest Festival, Pickathon and more. Check out tour dates below.
jjuujjuu TOUR DATES
4/19 Petaluma, CA – Phoenix Theater %
4/21 Indio, CA – Coachella
5/21 Toronto, ON – The Garrison
5/24 London, UK – Moth Club
5/27 Barcelona, Spain – Primavera Sound
5/30 Boston, MA – Crystal Ballroom *
5/31 Brooklyn, NY – Music Hall Of Williamsburg *
6/01 Philadelphia, PA – Underground Arts *
6/02 Washington, DC – Comet Ping Pong @
6/20 – 6/23 Rothbury, MI – Electric Forest Festival
7/30 Fort Collins, CO – Aggie Theater #
7/31 Denver, CO – Larimer Lounge
8/01 Vancouver, BC – The Pearl
8/02 Seattle, WA – Tractor Tavern
8/02 – 04 Portland, OR – Pickathon
8/06 Atlanta, GA – The Earl
8/9 Verbier, Switzerland – Palp 2024
8/10 Portugal – Sonic Blast 2024
8/17 Wales – Green Man 2024
8/23 St. Paul, MN – Turf Club
11/10 Seattle, WA – Freakout Fest 2024
% = w/ Boy Harsher, Seablite, Lucy (Cooper B Handy)
* = w/ A Place To Bury Strangers, SUUNS
@ = w/ JMB Motherfuckers & Company (featuring Geologist from Animal Collective)
# = w/ Pink Fuzz
