Lately, I’ve been thinking about purpose and what that means in the context of an artist and the work they’re drawn to create. Hawk House, the jazz-leaning rap outfit from London, had a purpose and 2014’s A Handshake To The Brain, their debut album, was just that—an ode to escaping babylon. The album opens with “Grey Matter”, a bleak but witty narrative on life in London and being stuck in this monotonous, steel grey city. Four years on, has the mood really changed and isn’t escaping babylon the dream?

The group may not be around at present but like the experimental neo-soul group Lucy Pearl, maybe Hawk House inadvertently created something in a moment that would last an age. Their legacy lies in nostalgia and, if you’re a fan, there’s a vibrant energy they release through the experimental philosophies that bind the trio together. A Handshake… follows the narrative of ‘Marvin’, and his daily rituals and navigations of life. On “The Nervous System (Topic 4)”, the events reach a climax and now he’s involved in something he doesn’t want to be in. And while Hawk House present this story in the topics, they subsequently show a desire to seek growth in the experiments. The album is contemporary and relevant because of its ability to remain grounded while imagining for the world Hawk House exist in.

London has only become more bleak and as a young working-class, black minority creative, things are only that much more harder with further creative funds being cut and dissolved. In context, it’s impossible for A Handshake To The Brain to not mean so much more to us than it did in four years ago, because the creation of it was so intrinsic to living in a city such as London. It invokes a reaction out of listeners and allows you to peel back a new layer of it on each listen, and its reverence grows as time goes on.

Underground legacy is sometimes that much harder to achieve, as there’s a heightened reverence with your art that fans often possess. Hawk House were able to achieve that because they truly permeated a harmonious energy through their music; they remained unbound by orthodox approaches to creating melodies, leaning on the spoken word-inflected rap style of Demae, and the grime vocal-inspired Sam and Eman.