I don’t think I know how to talk about Fantosmia from Jorum Studio, , so instead, I am just going to run their list of notes through my internal translator and speak them to you in my language. This is the scent of a leather armor repurposed into a stewing pot into which you stir the sticky sap of a wounded tree, the sour scrapings of the inner rind of a pumpkin, the last few crumbles of Transylvanian honey bread blessed by the holy sisters and studded with spirit-soaked dried plums, and a scant handful of musty seeds and peppery herbs. Stir over stones that haven’t seen sunlight in one hundred years and trap the cookfire’s ghostly smoke in a glass vial for after-dinner divinatory purposes. This scent is a cryptic recipe written in a forgotten tongue; I can almost decipher the symbols, but ultimately it remains a mystery, a riddle that I can’t solve. I can admire it, yet I can’t quite call my own.

As intrigued as I was by the idea of a fragrance inspired by the lore of the phoenix, this is less a solitary mythical firebird and more a gaggle of mean girls cackling at a sick burn. It’s the sort of ambery raspberry-smoky rose that I’m already disinclined to like, because I don’t love fruity florals, but there is something about this one that’s particularly smug and acridly unlikeable. It’s got the structure of a scent that aspires to an aura of power and allure, but it falls flat, it’s just a loud, saccharine veneer in the shape of a void where a personality is meant to be. And sure, you can tell me I need therapy for my high school trauma, but I swear I don’t even think about that stuff until a particularly awful perfume comes across my radar. This is one of those perfumes.

Primal Yell has elements of hot iron, cherry, and bitter almond in addition to patchouli, vetiver, and some other notes, and this is definitely the moodier and broodier of the debut duo from Amphora. I definitely get that red fruit, but it’s swaddled in black velvet and furs, and encased in an ancient iron coffin. As a matter of fact, this is very much a blood popsicle shared between two very old, very chic, and jaded, too-cool-for-school vampire lovers.

With notes of frozen apple, dried rose petals, candied violets, marshmallow, cashmere, and white musk, Sublimate is a disco ball piñata of Pixy Stix dissolving in a vat of liquid nitrogen, exploding into a supernova of candied campy Barbarellas. It is a technicolor cacophony of hyper-fruity absurdity, a celebratory sweetness that leaves your soul awash in glitter and makes you question the very fabric of reality, and truly, I think it is the penultimate recipe for euphoria.

Coriandre has got the hazy, soft-edged quality of an old Polaroid left too long in the sun. A warm, grassy summer day recalled through the yellowed veil of memory. There's a brittle, bitter dreaminess threaded through it, like dusty butterfly wings pinned to a bed of soft, curling moss. It's dry and woody and musky and I think it smells a bit like a lovely little secret that you might never be ready to share - the kind that quickens your heart and warms your skin just for keeping it.

Imagine the most potent headshop you've ever visited and up the ante with the patchouliest fortune teller you ever met. Imagine this scent driving all your friends and loved ones away. That's OK, you smell marvelous.

Black night forests frozen in time; tarry, resinous pines and greenest firs and crisp midnight air, tiniest pinpoints of starlight. Woodsmoke and loam, lichen and fern, and musty mosses creeping, creeping over fallen logs and worn stone paths. Spiders webs tangling high in the branches, dust settling on the strands. Time has slowed and finally stood still in this forest while the world outside advances and evolves and moves along as is the world’s habit whether one interferes or not. This is a still, solemn, forgotten wood, without any birth or growth, and yet undying

Straight up Bánh mì. It sprays on a promising, yet vaguely astringent oriental, but within seconds it is the various components of a Vietnamese sandwich. Cilantro, daikon, pork belly, chiles, pickled vegetables, right down to the yeasty tang of a crusty baguette. There must be something wrong with me; no one in their right mind would make a fragrance that smells like this. However, sometimes one is just in the mood for a sandwich, and this is certainly complex and delicious.

Safran Troublant by L’Artisan Parfumeur is a wonderfully restorative, heart-warming/heart-opening scent. There’s a comforting sweetness to it, though not at all sugary or syrupy or cloying. A bedtime ritual beginning with custardy spoonfuls of sandalwood pudding and vanilla bean cream, a lukewarm bath infused with a concoction of milky musk and delicate pink rosewater, and a marvelously grounding, magically enveloping hug. You’ll sleep the soundest and deepest of sleeps, and you will be visited by the loveliest midsummer dreams.

There’s something about Craft from Andrea Maack that feels sleek and reflective, like the soaring chrome spires of a retrofuturistic sci-fi megastructure and its mechanized cybernetic inhabitants. It’s a cool, bloodless scent, like frost flowers on glass, and wintry chilled metal. I hadn’t read the description prior to writing down these thoughts and now I’m simultaneously pleased and peeved because I picked up on this perfume’s vibe to such an extent I’ve almost quoted the website’s copy about jet packs and robots right back at you. This is one of those instances when it seems the concept and the execution align in an almost preternaturally perfect way... like the android overlords have implanted these ideas directly into my brain!