feldman

Behind the cut are 15 reviews (L'Artisen Perfumeur, House of Gloi, Conjure Oils, BPAL). All of these are available to go to other homes. I have a swaplist, but I'm also open to suggestions and other offers, just let me know in the comments if you're interested in anything.

L'Artisan Parfumeur Fou d'Absinthe  absinthe, star anise, dry pine, cistus, angelica flower, blackcurrant buds, clove, ginger, nutmeg, patchouli, pepper, pine needles, fir balsam
A piney version of 1970's era Irish Spring, post-shower version. Green and bracing without any aggression. This is Buster Bluth on the prowl: smoothly groomed, with little narrative change. I'm still on the fence about this one, but I have other scents I'm more excited about and this should be set free to get it's own checking account.

House of Gloi Inslata Nocturna  Italian lemon, rubbed tomato leaf, olive leaf, black fig syrup and basil.
In the vial it's a summer kitchen strewn with heirloom leafy edibles. On skin there's a loud blast of tomato vine at first with maybe a hit of basil, then it goes off into a mild leafiness with maybe some fig. Fleeting, and gone after a couple of hours.

Conjure Oils Odin  Mist- covered Norwegian ash, mossy emerald lichens and the smoke from the Fates' campfire
This is not very woodsy and the smoke is only apparent in the vial. Starts out like cheap incense and goes oddly gentle and sweet in the drydown.

Conjure Oils Four Leaf Clover  Lucky sweet clover, lemon sugar and green fig, wisteria for hope and a drop or two of raspberry for gorgeous love
Spends about half an hour as a white clover scent, then turns to stinky white granular sugar funk with flowers. Possibly it's the wisteria that feels unpleasant in the throat. Extreme drydown is a honey sweetness when nose is pressed to skin, but that's only a few hours later. It's the dubiously-fun daytrip the SS Minnow was *supposed* to make.

BPAL Tweedledum  Absurd! Green mango, fig, patchouli and green tea.
Fig leaning toward honeydew melon, a sweetness without much flavor, and really not my bag.

BPAL Harlot  Somalian rose, Moroccan rose and Bulgar rose with a sultry dribble of cinnamon.
Gorgeous rose, but solely rose, and fleeting without much of a grounding base note. Good candidate for layering, for those interested in adding rose to X.

BPAL Mary Read  Salt air, ocean mist, aged patchouli, sarsaparilla, watered-down rum, leather-tinged musk, and a spray of gunpowder.
In the vial it's salty musty patchouli, sarasparilla, with a slight hint of leather. On skin the scent starts as a mix of mellow patchouli and leather with a fleeting trace of salt. This phase is brief and sadly forgettable. Any salt, gunpowder or sarsaparilla present is totally occluded by a squat pale blue candle jar of an 'ocean' note.

BPAL Prototype PPV662 [no site link or description] "a soft musky/amber blend with rose throughout "
In the vial I'm detecting rose, musk, possibly amber. On the skin I get rose for a moment, then it becomes an unpleasant sharp powder scent.

BPAL Prototype PPN143 [no site link or description] "herbs? aldehydes?"
This smells like bracing herbs, with something like menthol but without the chill, a dark matte green fir scent with maybe a touch of fennel. Then I get a soapiness in the back of the throat and the scent seems to hollow out, losing the green middle.

BPAL Prototype ICD23 [no site link or description] "A sort of jungly, feral green"
In the vial it's a sharp dirty green. On skin it takes a turn toward Irish Spring, and ultimately the experience is less like smelling the soap and more like getting your mouth washed out with it. I may be biased against aldehydes.

BPAL Mantis [discontinued] Crushed herbs and sweet amber resin with a streak of patchouli, neroli and golden musk
The patchouli and amber keep it interesting, but the majority of the scent quickly goes powdery soft, which is okay but not my beautiful cake--possibly the neroli or the golden musk is what's going powdery? I'm still trying to pin these notes down, and figure out how they tend to behave.

BPAL Psyche [discontinued] Bulgar rose, Chinese white musk, lavender, orchid and frankincense
Shouts rose for five minutes, then turns to lavender and something floral joined by a soft musk that is sneeze-inducing. I washed it off within fifteen minutes. Both sneezing and washing are rare for me, but given my reluctance to go down the laundry aisle as a child (and even now), I'm pretty sure it's the white musk and/or lavender to blame.

BPAL The Light of Men's Lives The wax and smoke of millions upon millions of candles illuminating the walls of Death's shadowy cave: some tall, straight, and strong, blazing with the fire of life, others dim and guttering.
I like the idea of this, and in the vial it's a malty honey scent. But BPAL's beeswax/honey notes often turn into a high-pitched dissonant screech on me, and sadly, if I don't swap this I'll keep trying it and giving myself a headache when it shatters into olfactory reverb.

BPAL Against Idleness & Mischief  Pollen-dusted honey, diligent tonka, steadfast chamomile, and goodly hyssop
In this case the screechy honey is tugged to a sweetly herbal place by the hyssop; unfortunately the chamomile adds its dried pee funk. The extreme drydown was tolerable, but that could just be relief at it ending.

BPAL Fog Machine Juice ['single note' no description on site]
I get where this is supposed to go, very lightweight but with an edge that calls to mind the catch in the throat that machine fog gives. But it goes completely chemical on me, best described by the family comments:
(kid): It smells soapy.
(spouse): 'I just bought a pallet of deodorant candles for my hotel'.