By Blake Morneau
Photos by Brianne Zimmerman
It’s been a long week. Midnight on a Thursday in a club wasn’t entirely where I wanted to be. But as West Coast hip-hop duo Pigeon Hole took the stage, Colin McCue (or ‘Stache as I’m going to refer to him from here on out) made it pretty clear that my tiredness was not an option. In fact, he was quite clear with everyone that the house was to be burned the fuck down and the ashes danced on.
Demands for hands in the air and bouncing were to be plentiful this night. Less demanding than ‘Stache, but no less enthusiastic, was his cohort Lee “Marmalade” Napthine, whose head wobbles around crazily like some kind of souvenir Bobblehead collectable when he raps. The combined energy of the two blasting from the stage is infectious, and luckily their music can keep up with the guys themselves.
Pigeon Hole’s beats are punishing and relentless, almost without respite. The songs from Chimp Blood, their last full release, bounce furiously on the right sound system and drew the biggest responses from the enthusiastic crowd. “The Turk” is a top-notch dance and rap track that gets me every time, “Higher State” is dirty techno blast of happiness and “Ice Dicks” is impossibly heavy and has no place in civilized society. Luckily, a Pigeon Hole show is not, and never will be, a place for civilized people.
They are the wild outsiders of Vancouver’s beloved hip-hop classicists Sweatshop Union. They seem to pay no attention to boundaries of any kind. It’s an inspiring thing in West Coast hip-hop, where ties to past are often clung to so tightly as to strangle progress right out.
New, unreleased tracks like “Killah” (pretty good) and “I’m Ill” (fucking awesome and needs to be released immediately) showed that they’re maintaining that wild course, seeped in deep, electronic waves more than ever. But inside all that boundary pushing and genre busting, the sweetest moments for me this night were the ones when the pure hip-hop goods bubbled to the surface.
The second verse on “Wolf Pack” did its job and sent the requisite hip-hop shivers down my spine, and “Looptape” is just a flawless slice of rap groove that never gets old. Nice to know that even while these guys assault people with their techno-brat ruckus shit that’s quickly becoming their signature, they still know how to rock a rhyme when they need to.
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