...and as ‘In All The Empty Houses'’ sixth and final track drew to its close I thought, "Well, that was nice." Surely the personification of that old idiom: “Damning with faint praise.” N-I-C-E. Surely it’s the least expressive and most pointless adjective in the English language. When Orwell invented the idea of Newspeak I hope that “Nice” was top of the list of words nominated for removal. But I digress”¦Epic45 are Ben Holton and Rob Glover and they do minimalist acoustic-ish electronica (if that even is a genre). Before you even get to the CD it’s pretty clear what’s about to hit your ears from the accompanying artwork: an almost desaturated, isolated, snow covered farm house ”“ the only sign of life at all being the plume of smoke emanating from one of its chimney stacks. The theme of isolation is echoed across the six tracks that make up this album of subtle programming, acoustic guitars and vocals.Opening with ‘We Were Never Here’ the album gets of to an unfortunately slow start. If I had to throw a ridiculous-but-appropriate sounds-like in there I’d go for: Just Jack covering the theme from Twin Peaks. Really. This false start limps into ‘Daylight Ghosts’ which picks up where its predecessor left off until, suddenly, in its second minute it pricks up the ears for the first time. The vocals are folded back on themselves, the drums open up, things start to fall in and out of the mix as the whole thing dissolves in to white noise and ambient chimes ”“ it just got interesting.The remaining four tracks of In All the Empty Houses continue in a similar vein: the title track flits somewhere between Radio Dept. and M83, a telephone vocal looping, “Your voice will always follow me”; ‘The Future Is Blinding’ uses off beat rhythms against dancing, sparkling samples; and ‘Ghosts On Tape’ mixes lo-fi and hi-fi production to great effect. Although the vocals here are nowhere near as obtrusive as on the opening track (and a half) it’s ‘Their Voices In The Rafters’ ”“ the album’s only instrumental ”“ that proves that vocals aren’t needed at all. It stands just as strong ”“ if not stronger ”“ than everything else presented here.Although by no means perfect, In All the Empty Houses has enough going on to keep things interesting. When writing “songs” Epic45 fall a little short of the mark; when putting pieces of music together their strengths are obvious. Nice.Buy the EP on Amazon | [itunes link="http://itunes.apple.com/gb/artist/epic45/id156674805?uo=4" title="Epic45" text="iTunes"]