There’s always a niggling panic in the back of your mind when you slide in a CD by a group who have decided to go ‘in a new direction’. With their debut, 2004’s Slow Your Roll, Time Machine established themselves as a group who knew how to produce good old-fashioned hip-hop, along the lines of De La Soul or Digital Underground. This was refreshing, sweetly sentimental rap – the small vial of antidote too all the Fiddys and Timberlands out there. The ‘Machine’s second release was the solid mix-tape TM Radio, which featured their masterpiece ‘On the Moon’ as well as a diverse mix of collaborators. It was all smooth sailing. 

The problem was that it was also unfortunately pretty niche sailing – Time Machine’s place was golden days hip-hop, and they didn’t extend a skinny kitten’s whisker beyond it. With their new release Life is Expensive, the ‘Machine have attempted to expand their sound and appeal to a wider audience – so while their earlier albums were a portal to the past, this time Time Machine are taking a trip to the present.

Life is Expensive features a few different kinds of sounds. First, you have those always-worrisome ‘expansion of sound’ tracks. Defined by hammering electronic beats that would be more at home among throngs of schleps on E, these tracks – notably ‘The Groove That Just Won’t Stop’ and ‘Something We’re Becoming’ – are the album’s weakest. Lyrically, Jet-Set Jay (formerly Jaysonic) and Biscuit (formerly Cornel) are reliably strong, but Mekalek’s high energy beats seem ill-suited to the laid-back rhythm of the vocals. Especially disappointing is ‘(If You Know What) I Mean’, a collaboration with Aussie’s own Maya Jupiter, which sounds entirely like something produced by another (much lesser) group.