bheansidhe

Huge billows of black and carmine stage smoke, filled with lit sparks of pepper whirling like evil fireflies. A hissing rattle of dried coconut sleeting down on a well-worn leather duster.

 

Confused yet? Psychodynamic Discharge is glad to hear it.

 

Sniffed, I get clouds of sweet sandalwood incense and white cotton -- not "clean laundry," but something white and cottony and opaque. I think this particular iteration of white amber is doing the powdery thing. It's not floral-forward, though the flowers advance as the blend wears down. Mostly, it's reading as benzoin/sandalwood dusting powder. There's a non-foody but vanilla-like sweetness (probably the benzoin, which contains vanillin). Also, somehow, the blend smells white.

The vanilla-resin-powderyness makes me place it in the XYZ Lace family of Lab blends (e.g. Antique Lace, Black Lace, Red Lace). So this is... Psychic Lace.

I think this is the best foody blend for non-foody-wearing people to try. My skin can take a sugary scent from sweet to a cloying, choking miasma in 5 seconds, and this stays the perfect level of spicy-sweet. Not to mention how well the spices balance; along with Moroccan Snake Pit and Gingerbread Snake Oil, this is probably my favorite Lab gingerbread. After a five-minute gumble over the aquatic and leather - always dicey for me - it settles into this long, low, dry spice that lasts for over a day.

 

The primary charm for me is the dryness. Gingerbread biscotti with sea salt! Gingerbread hardtrack, consumed outdoors in the salty ocean air! Woodsy dried gingerbread! Gingerbread jerky (not in the meaty sense but in the dried, leathery sense)! The bay rum blends beautifully with the allspice and stays truly gender-neutral, never cologne-y. There's just enough aquatic to bind the spices to the salt and woods, and keep them from drying up and blowing away; it never reads as "aquatic" per se. There's no clove-monster tromping over everything; it's all bright, peppery ginger and allspice and a faint dust of cardamom, wearing down to spicy woods.

 

In short, it's unique and I love my bottle.

These new Yules seem to have a lot of incense heavy blends. Haigophobia and Psychodynamic Discharge strike me as very incense-y.

Sniffed: wow, that's a brisk snap of the fingers under your nose. Peppery ginger, bright yuzu, and fiery red resins. This smells . . . martial and reverberant. I don't get any soul-crushing guilt, but there is indeed a frenzied energy to the blend.

Wet: I. Love. This. It's perfectly seasonal, too - the yuzu and pine with church incense notes make it smell like a room full of evergreen boughs and brightly burning red Christmas candles, turned up to 11. The dragon's blood is fruity and round; it's almost got a bayberry quality. How on earth does something smell like candle flame? I hope this dries down well, because it wasn't even on my list and now it's shot up to purchase status.

Worn: it gets drier and woodsier as it ages, fading to the ghost of burned incense. Really, really good incense.

I'm not normally into the incense-heavy blends, but this is a winner.

I have been using a spreadsheet since 2006. The only thing I've changed about my method in that time is storing it on Dropbox instead of one computer.

After wearing for a day I realize this is too masculine for me. It's an oakmoss petitgrain cologne, overlaid with a slightly astringent lavender/sage that never quite marries on my skin - they form two discrete layers, one warm and one cool.

 

This wants only the right guy to be an amazing, sophisticated autumnal haze. How on earth do you make a masculine lavender? Like this!

This really is a cold, ethereal scent, with a thin white floral floating over a dry papery note (orris?) and a slight saponin bitterness. (As a former darkroom developer, I can imagine that part is meant to evoke development chemistry). Is the dry note orris? As it develops, it loses the bitter edge and dries into a dusty papery base. I think I get something ghostly like lily-of-the-valley floating on top.

Delicate, girlish, powdery. I second the apple blossom -- possibly apple fruit, and maybe some vanilla orchid and a touch of Victorian rosewood. Like a soft, pink sister to Antique Lace.

 

ETA: zankoku_zen and I had a bit of a bashful "you go first / no, you go first" shoving match over who would occupy the first empty seat in the front row of the Reviews section. I C WHAT U DID THERE. Sheer brilliance.

Hey - I found Invidiana's review of this blend from 2012! (Reported for merging, so the link may move)

http://www.bpal.org/topic/78895-seance-ectoplasm/?p=2223055

 

Early on I realized that as much as I like lemongrass and lemon verbena, BPAL blends with those notes make me faintly queasy. (Phobos broke my heart.) Because Ectoplasm has the same faintly queasy miasma on me (I wrote "evil lemongrass vapor" after testing at Will-Call), I assume those are components. Please take my review with a grain of salt!

 

Sniffed wet, I get lemongrass, a mouth-puckering type of lemon candy note, and vapor or ozone. Like Invidiana, I get that lime-ish chartreuse-ish yellow-green impression.

 

Applied, it adds on a slight mintiness and some ozone. I think there's also a light masculine musk at the base, because as it dries, it becomes less vapor-ish and develops the woodsy-spicy quality I associate with a fougere, still overlaid with that pith-like yellow citrus.

 

Scent families: Cathode, Phobos, Y'ha-nthlei (wet); Spider-ish (dry).

Eusapia's a hard one to pin down. On the cool-to-warm spectrum, she's warm; on the heavy-to-light spectrum, she's light; on the fruity-to-floral spectrum, she's all over the place. Sniffed in the vial, I definitely get a pulpy, watery fruitiness - like bamboo? or I can see lychee - and warm but indistinct florals.

 

When I apply to the skin, I definitely get notes of stock or carnation, or a similarly spicy, old-fashioned flower, dusted with stargazer lily pollen. I think there's a resin component, but it's something light like white sandalwood or a pale frankincense. I think I get a hint of beeswax candles, but it's not the typical Lab honey note, because it's not going sour on my skin.

 

The longer this wears, the drier and more powdery it goes. In the Wikipedia entry I read that Eusapia Palladino (by all accounts a screaming fake) would conjure "spirit flowers" in her act, so if Beth's intent was a seemingly live bouquet that fades and becomes ghostly as it wears, she's got that in spades. The scent also keeps that somewhat unsettling warmth - like sitting down in an empty chair but feeling the ghostly imprint of someone else's body heat there.

 

I'll be really interested to compare with the released blend and the notes.

 

ETA: Wears down to a slightly cloying dusting powder on me. Not a chemistry match.

Right, so, basically, this is an olfactory interpretive dance of Theda Bara's eye makeup in Salomé:

 

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ca/Salome%2C_1918_-_Poster.jpg

 

Right there, with the smoulder and blowsy and beautiful and dark and probably a tiny bit evil.

 

Also almost every note that hates me ever, so that's as useful as my review can get.

All I wrote was "coconut macaroons and rum ice cream."

 

None of that flips my switches (although I'm sure it's lovely for the right person), so I didn't skin test -- just wanted to second tativa's coconut cake impression.

It's got a base akin to the thick aged-patchouli-and-vanilla of Banshee Beat (there, I said it, let the stampede begin), but liberally cut with syrupy honey. I get almost no cinnamon. The vanilla, which is slight, smells like the woodsy, resinous vanilla from Hope and Fear Set Free. Overall this is a complex, earthy, honey-and-patchouli on me. Soft as worn leather, floats low on the skin. If these are your notes, then rundon'twalk.

Clove, tobacco absolute, aged patchouli, and oakmoss James Earl Jones / Barry White duet in the pumpkin patch.

 

Slightly more useful review on retest: Beautiful; woodsy, mossy, with a dry spiced pumpkin pulp in the background. Not a foody blend, nor a pumpkin-dominant one, though pumpkin lends a beautiful soft creaminess in the back. This smells like a spiced forest floor. It's masculine without reading as "cologne," and while the clove is definitely there, it doesn't seem to be stomping over everything.

This one is... odd? But good? It's an intensely sweet, earthy musk when wet - heavy on the sugarcane, but without a specifically boozy rum note. Tons of sweet pipe tobacco in here too. I'd love to see a side-by-side compare with the tobacco SN, but tobacco hates me, so please look for someone else's review. It smells like the same tobacco that's in The Antikythera Mechanism.

 

Another great for-the-guy blend, but also gender-neutral. I get some caramel on the back end, but as a warm toasted nuttiness and not as a pastry.

What would crème brûlée smell like if it were made with peaches and jasmine instead of egg and sugar? This, this. The first wet dollop is unbelievably plush and creamy. If you're curious about the jasmine, it's a dead ringer for the sampuigita single note. If you found that one too woody-harsh (I did), here it's rounded by the other notes. Jasmine and peach dominate and the rest sing chorus.

 

Nothing I would wear, but should go over really well with jasmine fans. Never goes soapy or shrill.

Peach VI is all about the sandalwood on me.

 

Wet, this is dominated by bitter-sharp blackcurrant and spicy resins, with peach in the background. On the skin it wears into a woodsy, sinewy resin with dried fruits. I amp the sandalwood, but this is a very rounded and ripe sandalwood, bolstered by peach and patchouli, with the bite of blackcurrant on top.

 

This would be a great masculine peach blend. Sadly, blackcurrant always turns to sweat on me, so I'm not the best skin tester.

 

On drydown, it develops the resinous sweetness of dried fruits and incense.

 

In sum: It's like hiking with a pleasantly sweaty hipster man in a dry, high-altitude forest (probably in a state with less than 2 inches of rainfall a year), smelling the woodsy air and munching dried peaches.

This is peach and aprioct and nectar and peach liqueur and simple syrup. I was expecting a tooth-jarring sugar explosion. This is sweet, but more like fruit distilled down to the essence of its own sweetness. This *literally* smells like a delicious peach nectar beverage, possibly German, that I would guzzle by the dozen from my hotel mini-bar and pay 15, euros per bottle for and NOT CARE because it tasted that damn good. And then I would pour vodka in it. Lots of vodka. Where was I? Lacking vodka, trying not to drink the atmo.

Peach Candyfloss smells a lighter, brighter version of last year's Sugared Peach Bath Oil. All sweet peachy goodness.

CCXLI

Smells (overwhelmingly at first) like a stick of those dark-chocolate-coated raspberry jelly candies and one in orange smashed together. It even has the slight artificial fruit quality those candies have. However, after a fairly intense but striking dry-down, it's like something fresh and maybe even green with a good dollop of creamy yet dark--almost spooky--chocolate (the smell really reminds me of Halloween for some reason!) and a shot of pure sugar. Nothing burned about it.

 

If I liked to smell like chocolate, I'd definitely try to track down the bottle of this, even though I hate those jelly candies. This is just too amazing.

 

I just got an imp of this as a freebie with a sale. Thanks to djnevermore, I can absolutely, positively identify it as the smell of a raspberry Jaffa cake.

 

It is a freakishly accurate scent portrait.

So what happens as this venerable lady approaches her first decade of aging in the imp?

 

My decant of Lenore is liquid darkness. When I sniff her from the vial I get a papery top note, like a faded photograph of vetiver, but on the skin she's plum and patchouli, boiled down to syrup and poured on a stack of earthen loam pancakes. The final base note is a matte and blackened rose musk, but this is primarily a soft, dark, rounded patchouli syrup.

I would love to know what a Corrupt Chancelor smells like.

 

Unfortunately, I am allergic to something in this blend. Horribly allergic. Not on my skin; I mean that as I bend to sniff the oil, my nasal passages slam shut like a pair of twin airbags have just deployed in a high-speed collision with a candy-apple red Man Turbo. All that comes through is a faint trickle of nebulous guy-scented oxygen.

 

Can't smell a thing but vague... stuff. WHAT SISYPHEAN TORTURE IS THIS?

People's reactions to this one are all over the board, and I can see why. It is a total morpher.

 

From the bottle I get a big nose of that heady bourbon vanilla and a lot of a rounded nuttiness that must be the coffee bean. It doesn't smell like brewed coffee. It actually reminds me of Wezwanie/Hold in the bottle.

 

On my skin, this is PATCHOULI. Soft, earthy patchouli, not hippie-stink patchouli - which is nice, but the blend loses the bright sweetness and becomes almost loamy. From the "Himalayan spice" cabinet, I think I get hints of coriander and ginger. The bourbon vanilla is an undefined softness and not a foody vanilla at all.

 

The far drydown is 100% that muted, earthy patchouli with a light masala spice vibe on top.

 

For the right patchouli lover, this blend will SING. Alas, I am not that patchouli lover. It goes loamy and ashy on my skin - which is a fault of my skin, not the oil.

Unstern! Sinistre, Disastro

 

OOHN-shtairn! (Unlucky!)

(I'm going to guess the Spanish is pronounced "SEEN-istruh, DEE-zahs'troh")

 

I'm pretty sure that "sinistre" is French and "disastro" is Italian. In Spanish it would be "Siniestro, Desastre."

 

Thank you for helping with all that German! That's extremely useful.

 

I tell you what, these indistinguishable Romance languages need to GET OFF MY LAWN.

 

 

Sadly, my French predates 1800 and my Spanish and Italian are non-existent.

Miskatonic Philharwhatsis??

 

A QUICK GUIDE FOR THE AMERICAN WHO WISHES TO NOT HORRIBLY MANGLE THE GERMANIC IN THOUGHT, WORD, OR DEED

(Italian or French, you're on your own.)

 

A QUICK NOTE REGARDING "UND"

 

"Und" is German for "and." It begins with an "oo" sound. If you say the English word "went" with your lips pursed to make an oo instead of the w, you have successfully approximated "und."

 

A QUICK NOTE REGARDING THE TRANSCRIPTIONS HEREIN

 

They are intended for, as it were, the common reader. They are not the "correct" phonemes.

 

 

Schlaflos! Frage und Antwort

 

SHLAHFF-lohs! FRAH-guh oont AHNT-vohrt

 

(Sleepless! Questions and answers, or, Call and response)

 

Unstern! Sinistre, Disastro

 

OOHN-shtairn! (Unlucky!)

(I'm going to guess the rest is pronounced "SEEN-istruh, DEE-zahs'troh")

 

Trauervorspiel und Trauermarsch

(Funeral Prelude and Funeral March)

 

German "r" sounds are uvular, which kind of sounds like an engine in reverse.

 

(using the same vowels as in "vowel") TROWURR-FOR-shpeel oont TROWURR-marsh ("a" as in "father")

 

 

Und wir dachten der Toten

(And we thought of the dead)

 

OONT veer DAHCH-tun dare TOET-ehn

 

There's that back-of-throat "ch" sound as in loch. If you can't manage it, go with a hard K.

 

(Every German I know swallows that second T in Toten to make a D, or makes it a glottal stop depending on dialect, so I actually hear it as "TOE!ehnn." Sort of like a Brit swallows that double T in Butter.)

 

 

Totentanz

Dance of death

 

TOE-ten-TAHNTS

(hear it pronounced by a real speaker here)

 

That terminal "z" is pronounced with a sharp "ts!"