Floyd

"I always liked simple songs" (John Lennon)
Similar to scents, music seems to be able to engage directly in emotions. The more complex tonal compositions often only leave a lasting impression in the aftermath when everything has come together, sometimes it takes several attempts to learn to love them. Simple songs, on the other hand, often address the listener's feelings more directly. John Lennon was certainly a prime example of the fact that both can come from the pen of a composer.
Penhaligon's Roaring Radcliff is a simple song. In contrast to complex fireworks of ingredients and fragrances such as "Halfeti", he uses only three ingredients: Rum, tobacco and spices. And that works very well. First of all there is a dark, almost syrupy sweetness, which reminds of beeswax candles, only that they were covered with a hint of warm vanilla and viscous cinnamon chocolate. The other ingredients are also easy to perceive from the start, the rum produces dark red depth, the vanilla could also be in the rather lighter pipe tobacco. The whole thing is enormously round and balanced. Radcliff is a quiet song, a gourmand who creates a memory that doesn't exist yet, a song you unconsciously hum after hearing it only once, because it makes you feel calm, good, balanced. A song for the cool autumn that tells the story of winter and transports warmth.
A great development is not taking place. In the nine to twelve hour shelf life, only a continuous, seemingly infinite fadeout takes place. In general, the development is reminiscent of the 12-piano final chord of "A Day in the Life", a chord with a very long reverberation, always with a moderate, rather tight sillage. Radcliff" is a song without painful men's pain, without unhappy love or heartbreaking loss, simply an extremely delicious unisex scent for cooler days.

I meet Peñha Ligòn, a quirky old Spaniard, in his cottage with large garden in southeast England. "He grins and leads me through his picturesque orangery with one hand on my upper arm. He casually picks a few mandarins and tangerines from the trees and bushes, while he talks about the British and laughs heartily in between. Before he takes me to his garden, he throws the citrus fruits into a large basket of soaps. "The English may smell it for soap in summer, it's like freshly washed." He says and laughs again when he notices the amazement in my facial expressions.
Then we step outside into the open. The fog still lies over the lush meadows and the cold of last night can be felt directly on the clothes. For a moment Ligòn pauses: "You see, that's why I came mad! The English call these Temperraturr Crisp." Again he laughs. "Is always thinking about cornflakes." He takes a step out into the meadow and you can hear the grass, slightly frozen by the dew, crunching under his shoes. "That's what you find in España. Crispy fris!" Then he cuts off a few hands full of it and throws the whole thing into his basket, before pulling out some more grass with soil and moss at another place and stuffing it with it. On the way back, he plucks a pair of lavender and bitter orange blossoms from the meadow and places them on the greenery. "Flowers are always good," he says and takes a few tufts of lemon grass from his front garden with him on the way to the kitchen. A crackling sound can be heard here as well, as he grabs the tufts. In his kitchen he finally dumps the basket contents including citrus fruits (with soap crumbs), a few spices and barks into a big old press and starts turning on an oversized wooden vice. The green-yellowish syrup is already flowing into a bowl. He dips a small test tube into it, closes it with a sprayer and puts it in my trouser pocket. "Sprinkle it on you in Verano, ahem, summer," he says before he says goodbye smiling with a friendly "Bayolea!".
When I test it on a very warm spring day, I understand why he moved to England. The soapy, fresh, citric top note looks like a short refreshment, not pungent, rather like a fresh shower. Soon the lemongrass is dominant, which leads the fragrance after 15 to 30 minutes over into the green, where the spicy floral notes are added and for some time this unique impression of frozen, dew-fresh meadows is conveyed. It is rough, but never prickly, which can certainly be attributed to cedar and moss. Unfortunately this wonderful impression lasts only about four to at most five hours, before the Bayolea says goodbye with a rather fleeting echo of light musk and some ambergris
Despite its short shelf life, it becomes my summer scent, the crispy green fresh morning air.

Colourfully dyed scarves and batik T-shirts in all imaginable colours hang on worn strings along the red brick walls. Through a narrow side street I escaped the terrible hustle and bustle at Camden Market, when an initially biting, somewhat indefinable smell rises to my nose. I follow the smell and squeeze my way through the narrow passage between old wooden stands with various fresh citrus fruits and spices (especially basil) that seem to sweat out their tart freshness in the midday heat.
After a while, it flushes me through the front door of a hippie shop, which I spotted by chance between the dense stands - or perhaps even erected. Close behind each other, as if on an endless row of clotheslines stretched on the ceiling, hang again huge coloured batik towels with unique patterns. But it's not the cloths themselves that cast a spell over me, it's their smell. With a good wine, its storage can be recognized by its smell and taste, with these cloths it seems to be similar. With my nose dipped into the towels I let myself drift through the shop with my eyes closed, always straight ahead, towel by towel. After the dyeing they were obviously washed with detergent and partly wrapped with Nag Champa incense sticks and various flower scented soaps, dark rose and lavender I think to recognize. A more precise identification of the other flowers and citrus fruits fails because of the ubiquitous Nag Champa chopsticks. Wonderful flashback, I think to myself, and I can't let my nose off the cloths for hours. Anyone who had a real hippie friend knows this smell, associates it with youthful impetuosity, squatted houses, summer in a VW bus or on the meadow of a festival, the moment when one smells her dreadlocks or sleeps in the tent on her knitted sweater at night, falls in love over both ears, of course. A fragrance with moderate sillage but amazing durability - in the clothes, hair and memory.
After more hours I think I perceive some resinous wood slowly diffusing through my gaps in my memory. I must have fallen asleep somewhere in a corner of the store, probably on an old English sandalwood bench.
When I find myself on the street some night, the scent still hangs in my clothes. Unconsciously I whistle an old motor psycho song, "I'm still wearing your smell", like before.
If I have to be a young hippie again for this scent. Nonsense, I also like to listen to the music of that time, I like to feel the memories. The old vintage bottle is a perfect match. Per summer flashback!

MischerPrice modular fragrance no. 602: From Bon Parfumeurs fragrances for layering, mixing, etc. the 602 is said to be one of the few fragrances that could stand alone. After several extensive tests, I can actually sign this - with a few exceptions. In order to experience the overall rather slim fragrance a bit more multifaceted, one should - due to the rather moderate Sillage and its almost lean endurance (about four to five hours) - put on a bit more orderly.
Spicy resinous notes accompanied by warm, slightly smoky wood nuances are to be perceived at first. Citric is really only very short and also rather in the background. A slightly more mature cedar and incense play the main role in the first one to two hours, the benzoic resin provides the resinous-warm connection. The fragrance then shifts a little more into the earthy: while the slightly adulated cedar moves back behind the sweet benzoin, a very pleasant patchouli (without cellar muff) moves forward, which completes the development.
This all sounds not very original, but it works well in everyday life as a fragrance for work, you yourself and nobody else in your environment will be surprised or killed by it, and yet the 602 is round and of high quality, rather stylish understatement, a "Booze and Bacci" in short and reserved
Less stylish in understatement is the glue on the plain bottle. But it would be easy to remove it and then let your creativity run free in the design - keyword: Paper Art, who likes it..
Since I don't notice anything of the above mentioned Vetiver in the 602, for all those who like fragrances a bit more complex and want to do justice to the MischerPrice modular principle, I recommend a sprayer from the 601 (Vetiver, Ceder, Bergamot). This makes the opening much greener and fresher and the Vetiver also brings some pleasant restlessness into the heart and base, but irons the edges away from the 602.

MischerPrice Building Kit Fragrance No. 601: These bon perfumeur fragrances for combining, mixing and layering are said to have been rather mediocre in some respects, while others have been quite successful to good in others. The 601 belongs for me rather to the quite neat.
The opening was very successful for me. The slightly spicy citrus-fresh top note, with which I find the grapefruit most dominant, already incorporates many of the other ingredients. I think I perceive a beautiful chord of flowers and the vetiver that determines everything here. Already after about half an hour the impression changes completely to dark green: The interaction of cedar and vetiver is very round, long-lasting and not very woody. After another three hours, the fragrance changes its character again: warm sandalwood now appears, dissolves all other components and remains very close to the skin for another two to three hours.
To stand alone, 601 may not be sophisticated enough, but its solid simplicity makes it the right choice for some in their daily lives. With a moderate to tight-fitting sillage and very good durability, this unisex scent is a good option for everyday professional situations, so no one will feel bothered.
For layout in its original modular function, I recommend it for consideration for No. 602 (pepper, cedar, patchouli), but only a little bit of it, that gives the 602 a somewhat fresher and greener top note and the vetiver also causes some pleasant restlessness in the heart note afterwards. So 601 becomes a nice, dark green mosaic stone.