Snowy Landscape

[doomsday_disco]

Streams of frozen amber, snow-dusted frankincense, birch bark, Peru balsam, and rivulets of smoldering beeswax.

 

 

Gustav Lange

[badseed1980]

Wow, no one has reviewed this yet? Not one person? I'm NEVER first. I got this one because I love amber and beeswax, and Peru balsam is in my ride-or-die, No. 93 Engine. I like the warm, earthy, vanilla-y scent it adds to blends.

 

In the bottle, it's very sweet in a weirdly fruity way. It almost reminds me of pear?

 

On the drydown, there's something almost aquatic about it, and I can't for the life of me think of what it might be. Is it reminding me of Lyonesse? That could be it. Lyonesse has vanilla and amber, and vanilla is similar to balsam of Peru.

 

After a while, the warmth of the scent comes out even more as that aquatic note quiets down. If you look at the painting that inspired this scent, I think that they did a good job replicating the feel of it. The scent description made me think more of golden notes, but the picture is mostly greys highlighted by gold, and that's what this smells like to me.

[SmellsPrettyGood2Me]

Opening the bottle and taking a whiff, it really does smell like winter sunshine warming a scene. There is nothing minty, but I do catch one of the traditional BPAL "cold" notes. There is a sense of your breathing being slightly arrested by the temperature of the air. I catch the tiniest, most fleeting sense of the beeswax, alongside the sweet, almost-but-not-quite-piney frankincense note that is generating much of the brightness. 

 

On skin, it's somehow both warm and cold at the same time. The beeswax really starts to liquefy, and I get a slightly astringent woodiness from the birch bark. The Peru balsam also comes into it's own about 25 minutes in. Much like in nature, this gets less "frozen" as time goes on, settling into a golden sweetness. Moderately strong projection, with the most scent force in the first 3 hours, followed by 4 more of light sweetness. 

 

I would call this a playful cold weather atmospheric, which, despite it's sweet bottom notes, never ends up feeling heavy or overbearing. I like it very much; a dribble of sandalwood would make it perfect, so I anticipate layering it with a sandalwood single note when I want to deepen it a bit. 

[leptonpyr]

Going on, I'm getting quite a fruity amber--or possibly BPAL's fruity snow accord, or maybe both? It's also very much a sweet balsamic. I hesitate to compare another aspect of it (possibly the birch bark, or part of the snow accord, or both) to wintergreen because it doesn't quite smell minty, but I'm getting just a whisper of something mentholic, leaning a little towards pine, albeit the light, citrusy kind (is "terpenic" the right word here?). I'm not sure if I'm getting any beeswax, but apparently beeswax can sometimes be quite balsamic, so it could be contributing to that aspect. As it dries down about a half hour in, I start getting a distinct touch of warm resinous spice too, which might be the frankincense or more of the peru balsam. 

 

Snowy Landscape strikes me as oddly fresh for a wintry scent, there is something about this blend that is very fruity on me, with some pine-forest vibes in the background. There's also something about it that feels very very clean to me, almost soap-like, or some kind of masculine-leaning cologne I associate with clean freshness. It actually reminds me quite a bit of Thalassa, it has the same warm-balsamic-spice thing going on, but I'd have to do a side-by-side comparison to really test that. I don't think this is one I'll be reaching for all the time, but I'm very interested to see how it goes for me. (Normally I wait for my thoughts to cohere a little more solidly before reviewing, but I thought I'd get this up now since this blend will be coming down in a month. If something coheres a little more for me the next time I try this one, I'll update here!)

 

Edited 4 hours ago by leptonpyr