Paris Texas are just about ready to get off this planet. On ‘Mid Air’, the LA punk-rap duo’s thrill-packed debut album, they trade bars about escaping this doomed rock by saving up enough cash for a one way ticket to Mars. “The sun is whoopin’ everybody’s ass,” they lament. “Earth finally threw in the towel.”
On a blazingly hot afternoon in downtown Los Angeles, it isn’t hard to see how the pair arrived at that apocalyptic conclusion. The sun is indeed whoopin’ everybody’s ass today. In a warehouse studio booked out for their NME cover shoot, rapper-producer Louie Pastel has his shirt off and a weathered MTV cap pushed back on his head. He’s holding a cigarette in one hand and DJing from his phone with the other.
The sounds filling the room are as eclectic as you’d expect of a group that have drawn comparisons with Odd Future and Death Grips but who defy easy categorisation. We hear Louisiana rapper Autumn!, then Brazilian psychedelic samba from Novos Baianos and Radiohead’s acoustic version of ‘Creep’. Beside him, his comrade Felix is weighing up the pros and cons of filming vs photo shoots. “In videos you’re in constant movement, so you’re not stuck on one dumb face,” he ponders. “Models are crazy! I don’t know how they do it.”
Kevin EG Perry: Collected Works 