Bastard-Amber Dragon

[doomsday_disco]

Rarely glimpsed except in reflections or the flicker of fading film, the Bastard-Amber Dragon drifts through time like a fever dream of Old Hollywood. Born of illusion and artifice, it casts everything in its path in a honeyed glow. Its scales shimmer like tawny celluloid: aldehyde klieg lights illuminate golden resins, husky with toasted brown sugar.

[tajana]

In the bottle, the aldehydes glitter true to the description of dazzling kleig lights. Applied, I get fizzy, sparkling bubbles, a syrupy golden amber soda. Sometimes frankincense and labdanum have a cola-like aspect so maybe they're part of the proprietary golden resin blend, helping extend the aldehydic glitter effect, pushing the effervescent special effects to the limit. I feel like there may also be benzoin folded into the formula because there's a vanillic creaminess turning this into a curiously NON-gourmand cream soda. Brown sugar is toasted until it melts and starts bubbling along the edges, it's not like a typical brown sugar scent. The soda-like ambery scent bubbles along for hours on end with above-average sillage... a little goes a long way here.

 

In the drydown there is a waxy candle-like feeling that emerges on my skin, but it's not unwelcome. We're dimming the "lights, camera, action!!!" lights on the movie set and transitioning into candlelight after hours.

 

I think this will age really well and I'm curious to see how it settles over the months and years to come, if I can make my bottle last all that long.

Edited September 13 by tajana

[DigitalCoyote]

Wet: bright and effervescent.  Can something smell like how champagne bubbles zip around? I think they captured that here.

 

Semidry: There might be a citrus rind (grapefruit? pomelo?) in there.  Waxy but still bright and clean.

 

Dry: There's a whiff of good old fashioned cream soda or NY seltzer without the cloying sweetness.  It's bubbly like a soda--slower, bigger.  

 

Very dry: meeting in the middle--low key fizzy grapefruit cream soda.

 

 

It's a whole journey.  I get the nostalgia feeling: we're trying to explain what this one is like...but you kind of have to be there...and even then we can't quite capture it.