Bloodxclat

Grey the sky, the clouds dark, driven by the wind they race from each other, overtake each other and disappear on the continuous roll of eternity. The pressure rises. The barometer quivers. The air, thick to cut.
The whipped sea, an up and down, whitecaps bursting into salty beads of water, sharp winds of citrus peel tugging at living things. Herbaceous blasts of air come from the land, mercilessly rattling the old rusted fishing boats.
The first cold drops fall. Metallic haze covers the beach as the parched grounds await salvation.

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Neil Morris of Boston, has been known for many years for his diverse and special compositions. Here he wanted to create a "Dark Rain", the athmosphere before a late summer storm by the sea.

We are not dealing with an aquatic here. I don't find any typical aquatic building blocks in this fragrance. It starts with sharp lime followed by a very herbaceous cool environment. It smells like rain and earth. Effectively, you can smell the ozone as well. Metallic and salty it hovers clearly in the background. Rust still comes to mind. A great athmosphere!

Of course, aromachemicals were used here, that's quite clear. One should have no aversion to this. How else, you should direct such a fragrance in this direction. Salt, ozone, wind, the sea, metal, air pressure, all things which you can not capture olfaktisch. The way Neil combines the excipients with the natural oils I find great. At no time do I smell the infamous chemical soup.

The big storm calms down after about two hours and remains citrusy, herbaceous and still a bit windy, but with dark driftwood in the sand for the next 6h.

For fans of rain scents, sea scents and weathermen.

DS Durga is coming out with a new summer scent. (Cool! Wow! Yippee!)

-It's all about vetiver. (Expectations rising)
-Scenery is set in the small French Antilles. (Expectations rise frappant)
- There are to the fragrance release as always videos and Spotify soundlists (with Caribbean music from Haiti, Guadeloupe and Martinique-identical to my daily playlist (even if you do not believe it! Expectations take morbid traits))
- Basis should be a Rhum Agricole accord (half my living room cabinet consists of it)

---> this made Durga St Vetiver my most anticipated fragrance this year. Great expectations... usually a bad omen?

Calm, breathe. Look at bottle. Spray!!

It starts very citrusy green, rather bitter, a nice bitter orange peel. Yet green and very fresh and airy. Then the pink pepper kicks in - it suddenly crackles and tingles and it feels like a bitter orange cocktail with sprizz! Great effect. The background continues to be diffusely soft and kind of green. Airy. The diffuse soft soon turns into a special sweetness. A kind of green like leafy green from leaf stalks or leaf sap, but in sweet. This will probably be the sugar cane accord. A good balance between green and sweet! Bravo!
Now, as a spicy counterpoint, the clove leaf comes into play (St Thomas Bay Leaf??) With the spicy warm undertone of pepper and clove. That too, well dosed. Can make overdosed a fragrance broken.

So the bitter orange gets spicier, more resinous, gets a tad smokiness and this background green sweetness. Here, the scent is somewhat reminiscent of "Ishtar" by Rogue and "Chinese Tobacco" by 19-69.

Slowly I wonder where the hell the rhum is. And I haven't really been to the Antilles yet either. David, what's going on? I want to be picked up! Vetiver? Did it jump out over the ocean?

The scent gets more "ambery" over time the sugar cane accord resembles an amber accord. Warm, soft, fluffy, resinous and a bit smoky. Above it still citrus. The sweet green slowly turns into recognizable vetiver - but a quiet, fine, very decent vetiver.

Rhum Agricole? My wife is shaking her head, too. So am I. David, what did you do to the rhum? Okay, distantly, very distantly, the scent reminds me of a Shrubb in the drydown. That's what they drink in the islands at Christmas. A white rhum based rhum liqueur, usually very strong, with bitter oranges (orange de pays) or mandarins, limes, plus cloves, star anise, cinnamon and other barks. Removed David, removed. Yeah, kind of.

Where were the seaweeds, anyway? Breadnut tree? Here we would land again in another discussion, because I think it was rather the "Fruit de Pain" tree meant, which would be the breadfruit tree. But actually totally doesn't matter, because you can't taste any of it anyway.

Durability is super, 10h for a summer fragrance. Top.

How should I rate this now? I am disappointed. That's for sure. This is way too clean, way too sterile and too clean for the Caribbean. Here it would need more life, more dirt, more "Fête!!!". A rhum distillery is dirty, noisy and chaotic. Just like the rest of the island.

At least I can say it's a great and special summer scent with a lot of staying power. And not everyday! Make yourselves a picture.

Many thanks to Mr. Dubben from Cologne! Insanely nice!

And thanks for reading!

Marc-Antoine Corticchiato. The Corsican has the gift of starting his fragrances often hard and painful.

Here we have a right haymaker right in the face with pure immortelle - wild, herbal, spicy, dry. That harsh curry herb note which eats into the nose.

The haunting goes (really!!) only a minute, then comes wonderfully fresh and airy lavender notes and a bit of licorice / anise. The scent immediately shifts to a Mediterranean herb garden. Airy, spicy, fresh. Tea joins in - freshly brewed, somewhat bitter black tea with a malty note.

Up to here, a great Mediterranean herbal scent. It follows the transformation à la Corticchiato.

Damp, steaming hay bales. In addition, a dark, heavy tobacco note, which really works wonderfully with the hay. A great unit. The whole lays absolutely skillfully under the spiced Assamtee and gives a dark, damp, spicy ambiance. The tobacco is effectively earthy in nature.

We are hereby no longer at all on Corticchiato's Corsica, but the fragrance made me think of the Eastern Oriental Hotel in Penang / Malaysia. In the 1920's, many Illustre guests descended here, from Rudyard Kipling, Karl May, to William Somerset Maugham and so on.

Hermann Hesse wrote from here:

"In Penang, on a hot humid glorious evening, the swelling life of an Asiatic city struck us for the first time...We gazed with amazement at the colorful phenomena of alley life in the Hindu city, the Chinese city, the Malay city. Wild, colorful bustle of people in the always crowded alleys, nightly sea of candles..."

At the latest now, when the oak moss & patchouli pop off, then we have arrived in deepest Malaysia. They complete the exotic framework, the scent seems dense, damp, spicy, earthy, vibrant, exotic, foreign. Camphor-like and also unsweet, black cacaonuacs spread. Like a night in tropical Penang.

Even a night in Penang passes once in a while and the merciless tropical morning sun dries the lanes. The drydown sticks with spicy tobacco, hay, patchouli and the revived curry herb from the beginning. But all a little drier.

Durability is about 10 hours, the sillage is relatively strong - not too much is the motto here.

I find the fragrance very exciting. The balance is very nicely done between Mediterranean & exotic. Typical for Corticchiato. The whole works for me at no time too heavy or too dark, but is nicely loosened up by the herbs and the bright, shimmering lavender. The tobacco is not smoky or ashy at any time, but is dark, moist tobacco leaves with some earth to them.
At times, the fragrance is somewhat reminiscent of Lutens "Borneo 1834".

Here you must not be averse to the special scent of immortelle - the herb, which is infamous as "curry stew", was used here optimally and it fits like a right haymaker on the nose. For fans of exotic spice scents & tobacco, this is a trip to faraway lands.

Very evocative, so to speak!

Shango stood on the porch and looked out over the old work yard. The setting sun was turning the sky a glowing red. Thick mists were already wafting up from the swamps behind the sugar cane fields, breaking the light. A hot day came to an end at Shango's tire service. Not much had been going on. Still, his friend Neal's old '49 Hudson hadn't been ready. How annoying.
He took off the stained, gasoline-soaked coveralls, sipped his iced orange soda, and lost himself in thought for a bit. He felt a little woozy in the bulb. The sun was setting fast.

All at once, inconceivably, a monstrous, burning, smoking can of Orange Soda flew through his field of vision - falling from the sky! And exploded with a metallic BLÄÄMMMM behind the sugar cane fields.
"aaaaaahhhhiiii O/E iiiaaaahhhh" Shango screamed while jumping around the porch like crazy in his underpants. Thousands of orange fireflies burst from thick juicy grapefruits, buzzing around like a sparking fire from the old tiled stove and soaring up toward the sky. Yellow-green citrus peels fell at Shango's feet, ethereal, herbaceous, and flickering. "What the oily bog hole was THAT again? What happened to Ishtar?"

He squeezed on a shirt, put on his machete, and let his gasoline lighter snap open. The old ship's lantern from the swamp. He lit the sooty, petroleum-soaked wick and ran, swaying a bit. From the field the smoke of glowing citrus pricked his nose. The orangesodacomet thingy had smashed into the neighbor's property. The crazy Swiss with his vetiver plantation. Here, in the middle of nowhere! He shook his head and pulled open the gate of the Vitrum Ltd. corporation. His arms were shaking, though it was still hot. He had to check on things when the owner wasn't around. Why today?
Cursing, he made his way through the dense vetiver plantation, dry, spicy sweetgrass scent rising to his nose, along with damp, herbaceous, swampy Nagarmortha. A blow here, one there, take this and BANG.
His head spun in the rush of the burning orange can. Grapefruits burst behind his eyeballs. Melted rubber tires flowed through his bloodstream. The old kerosene lamp pulsed in his hands. He became one with the lamp and when he smelled the gasoline it was too late.

Shango woke up in his yard. Through the flickering glow of the old ship's lantern, he saw his friend Neal circle a small hammer, then catapult it ZACK into the sky and then, as if by magic, catch it behind his back with his left hand.

"Shango, you crazy little bastard! Got you out of the burning field, didn't I? Chasing bush rats in your underpants, eh? In a dry vetiver field with a kerosene lantern, you old fogey! Instead of working on my Hudson, you lunatic!
I've got to get back on the road!
By the way, I forgot my acid here yesterday, did you see it?"


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Lampblack is a 6h trip through the citrus grove, with dry, very spicy vetiver and a damp, herbaceous nagarmortha. The two grasses with the pepper together give the illusion of an old, burning kerosene lantern. A citrusy-smoky summer fragrance that is very easy to wear and is once again a modern attempt to redesign vetiver.

The old dirty leather bag stood there in the corner. Crumbs of earth stuck to the worn leather.

What a curse, the deep drilling in the old zone. Constantly our troop was pulling strange things out of the earth. On the pocket, barely legible, stamped on an already almost black brass plate: ErrisMnte Calo. A relic of the old days? Ferris? When there was still human-spoken music? I laughed tinily to myself at the thought. Or the decadent city-state from the history books? I opened the bag.
Brimful of charred papyrus. Real paper. Unbelievable. Yellowed pages. Writings from the patchouli era. My internal search function had already scanned the writing and was translating it. Apparently dated before the great war against the Vetiverans. What a dense, dirty scent came out of that bag. I was thrilled.

After the essential oil ban in 2164 (all of Schwizerlandia had grown only essential oils, forests were cleared for air-conditioned oud plantations, mountains were hollowed out for underground breeding grounds for patchouliers, lakes were pumped out for calone raised beds and sea fennel fields) so-called chemtrail perfumes had usurped world domination. Artisanal perfumers were accused of essential oil smuggling (OES) and taken to the secret laboratories of the Pirouette Man. There, you were sprayed with chemtrails for testing purposes, and you were no longer given cheese to eat.

A blast what came out of that bag. I remembered the old smelly rag I found at the last drill. I kept it in the relics room. As a joke, I christened it "Tauerlumpen." It reminded me of a 6-D documentary about the junkyard of Zürichia I had seen once in training. I took the "Tauerlumpen", which smelled strongly of turpentine, scrap metal and petroleum attar, and set about scrubbing the leather bag. The leather remained dirty, as you might expect. Damp dirty. And it now smelled like the "Tauerlumpen" too. I unwrapped the dry papyrus and found a casket among burnt birch tar and dried resin. "Private Label" was engraved on it. Inside the box was a bottle of Wolfenbüttel horn whisky. On a note on the neck of the bottle: "for Ernst August. Your Meggi. 26.03.2015"

Smiling, I fold up the note. Bitters. That I still get to experience this. I look around. None of my colleagues take any notice of me. I'm looking forward to it. To the liquor.