Do you like to read books? Do you have a good pair of headphones? (Not those crappy ear-bud things — I mean something that covers your whole ear with comfortable sound.) If you have answered yes to both of these questions then have I got a find for you.

During the ten years it took Clint Hutzulak to write his first novel, The Beautiful Dead End, he thought it would be nice to have some music to set the mood. Being the multi-talented person that he is he called on his brothers Lee and Todd as well as some other musical friends to help him. Now, four years after the publication of the novel, he has released the soundtrack to go with it.

This dark and seedy instrumental soundscape reflects parts of the novel to perfection, but even if you don’t like reading you could get into this. With Clint, who admittedly has no musical experience, guiding the mood in the original recordings, he called on his brother Lee to fiddle with almost all of the tracks in post-production. Lee Hutzulak’s previous work with Dixie’s Death Pool spawned the English title of this project and his organic approach to sound structure flows through the disc.

There are great additions to this project by other Victoria artists, with Tolan McNeil, Dan Weisenberger, Thomas Shields, Matt Skillings, David P. Smith, Hank Pine and Jana Wessel providing individual tracks and unique sounds throughout the recording. These elements all combine to create a compelling listen for a compelling book that hopefully one day will be a compelling movie.