patina

My impression of the original Smut was simply dark sweetened musk. It's the sort of thing I like, but it's a bit flat. Licorice Smut isn't very much different. The licorice is strong and adds more complexity, but ultimately it fades too far in the background to give this much dimension. Oh well. It's not bad at all.

Damp melony, cucumbery grass. This is very different from my Easter Egg Hunt Grass Stain SN. Far less sharp and more gentle. I want to say there's a floral here but I have no idea which one it would be. Maybe there's sage? Probably spearmint. I get no dead leaves. Green scents often don't work on me but this one does. It's lovely.

in the imp I get the bell pepper note I sometimes get from leaf blends. On me it's almost...lemon? There is cinnamon here but I'm wondering if my decant was labeled properly. I seem to get a bread or pastry note at a distance, so maybe? Will update. Edit: leaves turned to dirt eventually then disappeared. In the morning I got something a bit like cinnamon King Cake. I love King Cake but I'll stick with that one.

Freshly applied this is sawdust and raisin cinnamon toast. I don't amp cedar so while it's certainly around I don't get a whole lot of it. I do get piles of cinnamon though. To me this is (appropriately) a prop carnival haunted house just off the midway rather than a stately manor that happens to be filled with funnel cake. But also there's a lot of cinnamon.

I get something medicinal. I can see how some people would get something a bit like licorice. But on me it's medicinal in a pleasant way. I do get black tea and traces of tobacco staining wood. Wood often goes very faint on me so I'll have to return to this review later, but for now my impressions are that this is relaxing and would be perfect for a dark rainy day. EDIT: I really love this one, actually. I suspect the woods are teak and oak. They work well with the tea and ashy tobacco. It doesn't have super wear length, but it's probably my favorite "creepy house" scent.

Cherry is always very loud on me, but here it doesn't overwhelm the cream and (later, on drydown) a buttery crust note. I said that Pumpkin Pie Musk was my favorite of these, but this is a very, very close one. I don't get wax per se, but there's maybe amber?

Butter! And caramel sweetness. Amazing. Unfortunately the leaves make it smell a little plasticy and burnt on drydown. I'm sure this sample will find a good home elsewhere.

The oud here is not rich enough to have an indole smell. It smells dry, a bit like old cardboard boxes, with some sugar (not enough to be truly sweet) and a toasted note. At first when I put it on it almost smelled soapy but that passed quickly. This is nice, overall but then I like cardboard box oud.

Pumpkin Pie. Sweet, very Pumpkin Spice and I can't separate out the musk. This may be my favorite of the three pies.

These fit together strangely well, like a grimy road strewn with wet leaves on a gray day, except the road is made of candy charcoal and all the grime is licorice, not petroleum based. This is not an especially sweet licorice. The leaves resemble those in October to me, with the same bell pepper note, except the licorice tempers them. This isn't bad, but a little strange. I think I'd prefer it with some other note to round things out.

Immediately I get patchouli and saffron (the saffron must be the oud). There's a suggestion of beeswax and indistinguishable dark resins. This is smooth and dark and a bit like skin musk. Very luxurious and as other reviewers have said, very close to the skin.

This smells of pear, blackcurrant and gardenia. On drydown I get cedar and moss too. This isn't very aquatic at all, but I think the aquatics are softening the fruit. Definitely more of a swamp aquatic than an ocean scent, but only if swamp water smelled of pear and blackcurrant. Something also reminds me of the poison berries in "Her Strong Enchantments Failing", which makes sense. This is a softer scent all around though.

Sniff: I'm immediately reminded of the dark plum in Crimson Peak's A Shadow in the Elevator. Is that violet? Wearing: This is a dead ringer for A Shadow in the Elevator, but lighter: less earthy no patchouli or oud here. Very seet and nice, for scent from a poem about fear and projection. Wearing and reading notes: maybe I've fooled myself into thinking there's plum because of the plum honey? Anyway, this is very sweet, sheer and purple-black. I feared the champa as a death note but it doesn't seem to be going off. I might actually like it a little more than A Shadow. This hole scent was made for me.

On sniffing: deep, a little spicy. i get swirls of incense, cacao and pine pitch. Application: Pine comes out strong, a fog slowly creeps in, incense spirals up from a burner, Sixteen second intro from This Corrosion begins playing, lots of unspecified depth and sweetness from incense. This is both heady and deep on me, I can see how it represents pipe organ music. Also the incense almost smells cherry-like. Weird. Dark, smoky, sweet, smooth, deep, EDIT: Bottle has settled, there's less of a whoomph! of incense on first applying. still settles down to be quite heavily cherry on my skin. Dragon's blood? EDIT EDIT: Further aging, there's no longer a dragon's blood stage. Instead this starts off as cheap chocolate and wax plus incense and settles into a musty vetiver and incense smoke. Not bad.

From other reviews, I expected a heavy wood and dust scent, but what I get is lighter than I thought. There's a lot of light, airy sandalwood combined with pages, oak, and dust, almost indistinguishably. I want to snuggle in with this, though far down there's a suggestion of band-aids that's probably the leather. Sandalwood, a big old book plus lots of polished wood. The amount of dust almost makes me want to sneeze at this point, but that may just be the power of suggestion. EDIT: There's a cold note on opening, like wood polish but chill. I'm getting a definite sense of draft.

My experiences with book scents: The Lurid Library (Halloweenie): very perfumy. Old yellowing paperbacks, but soaked in faded red musk. Dee (GC): paper, incense, leather and powder. sometimes this is faint enough to disappear, sometimes it becomes weirdly chemical leather but there's a nice mellow spot in between Miskatonic U (GC).I get milk and coffee, then on the drydown, cold coffee at the bottom of a mug. No books here that I can detect. The Book (Paranorman): I lost my decant, but I recall this was lots of mellow paper with some leather, very warm, very nice, sometimes fades rather quickly. The Gatekeeper: Maze of Games: sometimes wet ink, sandalwood bone, plus plenty of paper and leather. Something here occasionally turns unpleasantly grimy. Fitting enough but weird. Bookcase Passage (Halloweenie) Sandalwood dust for sure, but there's plenty of paper and wood here too as well as something faintly bandaid like. Not as mellow and sweet as The Book, probably because of the polished wood.

This reminds me of Organ Grinder probably because it's a dark scent with pine and tobacco notes together. However, Thunk is actually very different. Instead of the dirty patchouli, almond, and High John root there's just tobacco with a lot of purified pine resin and smooth, almost licorice smelling teak plus a dark cool metal. Dark, smooth, slightly medicinal without being dirty. The pine resin is toned way down from its tear-bringing turpentinw-y natural form but it's still pine. Very outdoorsy.

The cake is amazing, but the lavender without heavier notes to weigh it down is something I can't pull off at all, very bright almost medicinal. I'm sure someone who loves the lab's lavender would be very happy with this. Edit: Okay, with aging the cake and lavender are playing nicely. In fact, the lavender is often more of an icing flavoring than an in-your-face oil now. I'll still have to see if this goes off when I get hot but for now all I get is delicious lavender frosted cupcakes.

That is a lot of cake batter, though tempered by marshmallows (somehow I can tell the difference) and lots of dry cardamom. The cardamom does a good job of giving the scent weight but it also makes me sneeze.

This is the most delicious apple, tart but not too tart. So far nothing is overwhelming here. I don't directly smell the tea, but I know it's there. This is just well balanced and beautiful. It feels meditative. Like doing homework with elegant stationary. an apple snack, and expensive tea.

I was prepared to compare this to Pink Fuzzy Handcuffs and it's not a bad comparison but this is more complex. This is very clean, balanced and makes me feel calm, much like #2 Pencil. It's very girly, very simple, but I keep wanting to smell it. The saffron and lavender seem to do a good job of making this more than a pink powder puff. Lavender can turn into a tire fire on my skin, but this lavender seems to be behaving so far.

In bottle, gingerbread waffles (faint, mild gingerbread) and dark chocolate syrup all over the place. On me the gingerbread calms down quickly and I get mostly instant cocoa with a little bit of tame gingerbread waffle batter and chocolate syrup. Still good, though I have another favorite cocoa blend.

Weird, this smells greener than I'd think in the bottle. I smell a light, perfumy kind of citrus (a bit like neroli: a light, bitter orange). The myrh, when it shows itself is a touch on the baby powder side. On, the honey comes out like whoa. I get honey, neroli, and myrrh. This is sweet sweet, sweet, a bit too much of a good thing. On my skin myrrh by itself is treacly, so this is like honey, orange juice and syrup combined. The pale citrus wafts I get occasionally when not sniffing up close are very pleasant, however.

Mutable Water: the essence of faith. This is the scent of belief, be it in oneself, mankind, the gods, our myths, or our potential. This is the willingness to explore the darkness, the push towards the edges of fantasy or delirium. This is the perfume of the Psychopomp and the Mystic, the Saint and the Madman; this is the scent of the lifegiving salt of blood and ocean, and the darkest depths of the sea. Red musk and brine, ships’ planks of thorny acacia, an indescribable abyssophelagic musk, soporific lavender, and a strange, sweet waft of benzoin. I had to try this because I had no idea what the notes would smell like combined. It's BPAL ocean scent combined with red musk. The musk is softened a little by the lavender and benzoin. It's not a strong lavender, I can barely tell it's there. But I can definitely pick out some sweetness from the benzoin. It smells...tender? Sometimes the red musk and wood is the strongest element, sometimes the lavender and benzoin are detectable. But the brine is always there. It's an effect a bit like rolling waves. There may be some inky almost berrylike musk underneath everything, it's hard to tell. Overall, it smells like red musk dryer sheets. It's cozy. On drydown the brine dials back some and the scent doesn't resemble an aquatic any more. I'm even more sure there's a dark blue musk somewhere here.

Comes on strong vanilla pumpkin. There's some wood underneath that comes out as the vanilla dies down a little. This is a weird scent, strength wise. sometimes it almost disappears. A cup of pumpkin latte sitting sad and alone in an empty, smoky house. Edit: Maybe mine needed to sit? There might be a bit of old house in the background (ancient but impeccably maintained) but I mostly get pumpkin latte: all soft vanilla pudding and pumpkin. I don't know why I called this one sad. This is one of the coziest scents I've ever tried.