bheansidhe

Sour lime, fizzy gin, yuzu. Adds a white tropical floral as the initial sour-lime fizzes down. Smells like the same gin base as Swank and several Tiki Bar blends.

It reminds me of these chalky scent blocks my grandmother kept in her underwear drawer back when I was a kid.

OMG, I remember those! Wet, I get that comparison.

Agreed on the floral, but there's a pollen note in here that I think is stargazer lily along with violets and jasmine. The jasmine has that nutty tinge that makes me think it's night-blooming or jasmine sambac. I also get sharp, fresh lavender.

Not me, but not as awful as I was afeared of after reading the reviews.

Wet, I get a big hit of boozy cherry liquor and vanilla extract over vintage Antique Lace. Are those Miss Mary's babas au rhum I smell hiding behind the cooking vanilla?

The boozy overnote fades fast, and the hint of cherry evolves into a distinct carnation or stock note. This turns straight carnation single-note for a minute, in fact.

It dries into a light, elegant vanilla musk over carnation powder and sweet pea-type florals. The end result is too pink and powdery for me (just as Antique Lace was), but I see how this would be a big hit for AL junkies.

Lush, but not overpowering. Wet dirt and cool green florals and moss and dried rose. This is almost a dead ringer for Zombi from the vial, but with the addition of that green note. Could very well be bamboo in there, and maybe a brush of oude.

This dries into a light, fresh dirt note, sweetened with bamboo, with ambiguous dried florals background. The overall feel is very much Ars Morendi.

Wet: a big blast up the nose. Minty and astringent, but not a green mint; this is camphor, sharp fresh birch oil, or pine turpenoids, plus unidentifiable spices. I also get a hay or chamomile middle note. Maybe a very green sandalwood or benzoin as well? Maybe some clove waaay back there.

As the medicinal note wears down, I get a very herbal bottom note. You know... the dried version is reminding me of Vipralabda (benzoin, Greek sage, hay, melaleuca ericifolia, oakmoss, and blue chamomile).

Eeenteresting.

I'm testing a quarter-imp that's been through dozens of hands by now, so it's safe to say we've got some aging and oxidizing going on here.

This is a gorgeous foodie scent from the vial. Oddly, my first thought was "Crumpet Rebellion!" I got the butter, the pastry, and a red-berry filling like raspberry. There was a boozy depth to the background that resolved into a chocolatey Nutella note. There's none of the bitter or dust that I associate with several of the Lab's cocoa notes, but rather a smooth, pure milk chocolate cream. Unlike Bliss, this chocolate element doesn't go plastic on me.

This does morph into an oddly peanut-butter like note, as Myth noted, but it's not unpleasant.

Verdict: heavy on the cream, the milk chocolate, and the pastry. Light on a sticky raspberry jelly note, and a final hint of hazelnuts.

It's much drier and resin-y when sniffed than when worn. My impressions are a lot like fairnymph's, except that I'm getting yuzu, lime, and bay - though my nose can't decide between sweet bay and bay rum. I don't get the green of balsams; I think that's the bay. As it wears, I also get hints of sea salt.

A very sophisticated masculine cologne that could be gender-neutral as well. I like this MUCH better than Nepthys v2, and would love to see this blend released. I'd buy a bottle for the man-thing-in-residence.

Wet: burnt French roast, black cacao nibs, salt, and Yorkshire pudding (the savory gravy kind, not a sweet kind). This is the office breakroom on the weekend, with coffee scorched on the burner and the vague hint of burnt popcorn and leftovers wafting from the microwave.

I would love to peel that black coffee bean note and the bitter chocolate and put them in another oil, because this is trying to be amazing on my skin. It really is. And the salt and bready bits aren't.. actively offensive. Just odd.

Buh...what?

It's the Chicken Legged Snack Hut!

This is the saltiest roast turkey gravy you have ever smelled. It's going to pucker the hell out of your mouth, it's that salty. If you dare to skin test it, it actually wears down to a salty, yeasty note that's vaguely like the bread note in Drink Me. It's not.. horribly offensive, but I'm not a fan of the savory perfume concept. And I totally get how people smell burned popcorn.

Dorian plus... cream, light soap, and coconut? I don't smell any bergamot or tea. This is Dorian in drag as Snow White.

As it dries I begin to get whiffs of the lavender fougere; actually, I detect a background similar to the released TKO blend (which is a favorite). The soap wears away, but it stays a white-cream-and-coconut blend over a very faint grassy lavender and marshmallow. No tea, no, sir. Not wild about it. If I hold my arm sideways and give a long glancing sniff I get the released Dorian under coconut body lotion. I can see how the soft white creaminess would appeal to a lot of people, but it isn't me.

Okay. I applied a second time and really slathered, rather than dabbing like I did at first. That got me a blast of lemony bergamot/Earl Grey tea and lavender, with a stronger lavender in the background. Again, it quickly collapsed into a billowing poof of coconut-lavender milk body lotion. Lovely and feminine and delicate, but really Not Me.

Starts a very realistic green grass-sap note, like broken dandelion stems. It stays herbal, but as it dries I get whiffs of fresh-mown hay, angelica, hyssop, and chamomile.

Tobacco (both wet leaf and smoke), a hint of sweet sandalwood, a light woodsy balsam, black pepper, and dusty dusty dirt. It develops an oddly orange-blossom note as it ages that is possibly cypress.

Almost dead-on sweet, buttered kettle corn and pastry crust, though I should note I'm testing a quarter imp that's been shipped around a bit by now. I see the hints of eggnog and apple pie spice. Zero jelly - guess the zombies sucked it out before it got to me.

I'm glad so many people like Panther Moon, and equally glad it doesn't appeal to me, because I'd hate to hunt it down. OH THE HUBRIS, THE OVER-CONFIDENCE! Read on and WEEP!

I had the opportunity to test it during my eight-bottle pickup at Will Call. I get the black musk, champaca, myrrh and ambergris right off - the latter two being death notes for my skin, and the former creating an overwhelming Eau de Headshop. So while the scent is evocative - black, exotic, velvet-furred and powerfully muscled - I just don't want it pushing into my nose-space.

About two hours later, on the faaaar drydown, I get a lovely dry, spiced ginger, anise, and wood (possibly from the benzoin). If it was like this from the get-go I would have bought it.

Incidentally I wrote on R.M. Rilke for my dissertation for my German degree (and translated some of his poetry myself, which I won't inflict here). I always liked C.F. MacIntyre's version of this poem; normally it sounds forced when a translated poem attempts to rhyme in the same meter as the original, but I think it works for this translation.

The easy motion of his supple stride,

which turns about the very smallest circle,

is like a dance of strength around a center

in which a mighty will stands stupefied.

Only sometimes when the pupil's film

soundlessly opens . . . then one image fills

and glides through the quiet tension of the limbs

into the heart and ceases and is still.

ETA after three hours: What... what's this? What's this on my wrist? This beautifully dry, warm, sibilant ginger-box of really slinky seductive smelling STUFF?

That's the Panther Moon I let pass me by.

I have these listed under "Mint, medical, astringent" on the Scent Notes page of my spreadsheet. WHUT. YES. I HAVE MULTI-PAGE SPREADSHEET FOR BPAL.

Baku, Burial, Jabberwocky, Kathmandu, Loup Garou, Mad Hatter, Oneiroi, Pain, Red Devil, Undertow, Wolfsbane

(and LE) Bitter Moon, Ded Moroz, Dragon Moon, Schwarzer Mond

I have a seriously aged partial imp on my hands that I just tested.

BETH, OH, PLEASE, BETH, BRING BACK THE KING AND QUEEN OF CLUBS!! It's not fair that they came and went before I ever discovered them!!

King of Clubs, in his current incarnation, is seriously aged, soft, well-worn leather, grown over with green moss, covered in damp black humus-y earth. There's a gentle sweetness from the dark musk and almond. I don't get amber or fig, or if I do, they're one with this amazing blend. The drydown is a little dusty, but again, that may be because he's five years old at this point.

WANT BOTTLE!

This comparison would never have occurred to me had I not been testing them side by side, but the vanilla bean note in Wezwanie/Hold is a dead ringer for the vanilla base in Hellboy's Liz: rich and voluptuous, and decadent as Haagen-Daas.

The scents aren't otherwise alike, and I went into the skin test knowing full well and myrrh and honey hate my skin. So, given that caveat:

The first slather is warm and sweet, anchored by amber and sandalwood. Not foody, but definitely gourmand. It's warm and blowsy and almost unbearably rich. This is by no means a dry or woody blend.

But at my back I always hear

Myrrh's thunderous footsteps coming near;

And yonder all before us lie

Deserts of vast honey, horrified.

For three shining seconds this is a luscious melange of amber and vanilla bean-flecked Nutella. In fact, it's vanilla Nutella incense. And then the myrrh and honey pull a Godzilla Meets Tokyo. I think it best that we draw a merciful curtain over the end of this skin test.

Suffice it to say that if you're a fan of these notes, you should beg, borrow or steal a decant to test.

No tea… just lilac and hints of lavender over white musk. Some wisteria eventually. Smells like high-end Caswell and Massey Persian Lilac soap, but without the soap base.

Ends up as single-note lilac. If that's your thing, this is your blend. Sophisticated, not at all soapy or shrill.

Honey is one of my DOOM notes. Whether it's listed as honey, beeswax, white honey, golden honey, or "honeyed," it never works in a blend on my skin. But, because I've had enough surprise hits from doom-notes, I tried AMOTMS.

I think it's the star of this year's Shunga lineup, and I can't think of another blend that smells quite like it. What saves it for me might be the quince note (The Perfumed Garden also works for me despite harboring my twin enemies Myrrh and Jasmine).

Wet: moist, golden tobacco indeed, like a light, fruity pipe blend. It's a juicy, golden-raisin-like tobacco infused with vanilla-drenched quince. It's a BIG golden smell - this blonde swings a pair of hips like Mae West. I don't get any booze, and I don't get any citrus astringency at all, either from the quince or the mandarin. It's soft, plush, and seductive.

As it wears, it ripens very like a vanilla-cognac fruitcake, but the woodsy tobacco keeps it just this side of outright foody. It develops a warm spice note that I think might be the cognac. The throw is billowy and voluptuous. Also, at this stage, headache-inducing for me (thanks, honey).

On drydown, I'm left with a buttery cognac fruitcake and tobacco. It never goes sharp and nasty or musty and nasty, which are my common reactions to fruit-booze and honey notes.

Verdict: doesn't quite sing with my chemistry, but it manages to hum a few bars and fake it due to sheer overpowering awesome. I might keep the imp for sniffing.

I desperately want to find the volume knob on this scent and turn it up to FULL BLAST.

But it's a lovely whisper behind a door, and I can barely hear it. I've got my nose plastered to my arm, horking like a truffle pig to track it down.

This is delicate shoulders in a yellow sundress, and the nape of a swan neck, with a glimmer of gold necklace and white crystal earrings. The topnotes when wet are ginger, neroli and lime - a bright citrus without astringency. There's rose, but she's standing way in the back not bothering anyone.

Bijoux stretches and settles down on the skin. The tarragon and coriander green it, the oud and amber deepen it, the neroli and lime brighten it, the white musk and floral notes adorn it, and the beeswax seals it. It's feminine and light, but not girlish in the least. It's indeed opulent, but restrained.

TOO restrained. After thirty minutes, I can't smell it at all.

I'm going to gently blot my tears with Bijoux's soft lace-edged hanky, if you don't mind, and pass her along with trembling lips to a better home with more cooperative chemistry.

DEAD-ON OLFACTORY PORTRAIT OF A MUSTY ANTIQUE STORE.

This will either tempt you in, or repel you into the night. You know. Depending.

Eau de junktique: books, old horsehair stuffing under shattered silk divans, and dusty corners. These are some of my favorite things, so I keep sniffing this and giggling. It's not perfume, in that I don't want to wear it, but I do like sniffing it. I actually like the smell of genuine dust, but my allergies are such that I can't enjoy it. This is all of the scent with none of the unpleasant reaction.

This was drastically different than the prototype I tested at Will Call, which was heavier on the leaves and aquatics. The released scent is much closer to the "rotten linen" note in Julia Stone. The leaf component is reminiscent of November.

ETA: I didn't read MidnightAeval's review before posting this. Sorry for the repetition. Great minds et al.

Seeing the label art, I immediately dubbed this "A Miskatonic Dozen!" Worth owning for the bottle alone, folks.

So, Miskatonic 13 is decidedly unlike the other 13s, is an insane morpher, and is very chemistry-dependent to boot. If you love the Chaos Theory concept, I recommend trying this one just to see what the heck it's going to do on you.

On me, it starts out as a flourless dark chocolate torte baked by an upscale European pastry chef who thinks Americans put too much sugar in everything and our palates need to be "reeducated." It's made of that extra-bitter Scharfenberger chocolate, finished with hand-whipped vanilla heavy cream. Not cakey, not fudgey, but insanely dark and rich, with almost no sugar to be smelled.

Turns out the pastry chef was on a bit of a diet kick, because he substituted dried plums for butter in the mix. (I'm being politically correct. Prune growers went on a PR campaign a few years back and lobbied to change their product's name to "dried plums.") The musky plums blend well with the dark chocolate at this stage. Chocolate Madame Moriarty.

Turns out the pastry chef was kind of a stoner, too, because he was burning some crazy headshop incense in the kitchen while this stuff was baking. It's starting to drown out the cake, and I'm left standing in the Chapel of Chocolate Moriarty.

.....And the herbs come roaring up. At this point, with my chemistry, the blend goes out the window and starts to smell like some raw foodist revamp of chocolate torte that LOOKS like cake but is really made of dark carob chips and ground hemp seed and roadside grassy, pungent weeds. By now it's a strongly herbal blend soaked in plum juice. I'll note here that of the listed notes, myrrh and opoponax hate my skin, while black hellebore and cypress love it. I was hoping love would triumph over hate, but it looks like this blend is not meant to be.

However, I strongly recommend dropping a coin in the slot and taking this crazy ride for yourself. This one is unique.

OH MY GOD. This smells like... tropical CHRISTMAS!

That's exactly it. Tropical Christmas.

Made the boyfriend sneeze so violently that he couldn't get within ten feet of me, but I loved it. *wistful sigh*

Oh well. Out PdlC goes. I pick what keeps me warm at night.

I won a bottle of Rubedo v4 in the Dirty South Will Call raffle to benefit Georgia Organics' Flooded Farm Relief fund. After I'm done reviewing it, the bottle is going on Ebay with proceeds from the sale to be donated to charity.

Rubedo v4 is a solid, heavy scent, which would fit the concept of manifesting tangible form from inner Light. The first day I tested it, it was an overwhelming bloom of rose or rose geranium backed by another white floral (maybe magnolia), with a middle sweetness that suggested lotus. As the florals aged they became metallic, like a rose carved from copper and steel, but somehow still alive.

I tested it again after the bottle had rested for a day. That time it opened with a sinus-clearing green camphor note married to the floral. It reads a bit like Red Devil or Schwarzer Mond at this stage. There are resins, but I can't decide which ones. Benzoin? Galbanum?

On drydown, it has a earthy herbal sweetness laid over a resonant, resinous metallic finish. I like this stage the best, and it lasts for a good long while.

This blend is insanely hard to describe. It's not a metallic or a floral or a resin, but it has all those components. It really does smell weighty and complex, like alchemy in motion. I can't wait for this line to be released.

Smells like Irish coffee served next to a big slice of cheesecake - emphasis on the coffee. It's a DEAD ringer for coffee topped off with milk foam, a sprinkle of cinnamon, and a big shot of Frangelico or Kahluha.

This is delicious and delightful in the vial, and I might get some for a room scent, but my skin eats it to dust and nothingness in fifteen minutes flat. At that stage, it so resembles the dregs of Eggnog or Sugar Cookie that I may as well have worn those scents instead.

Boo! Maybe I'll hang onto it and give it a second try.