Air Brakes (ROUND 5)
Scent of the Morning 1: Mandodari, by Prin
Another femme fatale fragrance—a classic floral chypre, but with a Thai twist: my favorite vibe and my favorite style, especially when it has that Thai twist. The coffee really stands out on this wear. Coming off dusty, it resembles what I get from Little Song. And like Little Song it avoids the nasty synthetic vibe coffee takes on in so many fragrances. In that way, like Oud Luwak and even Kasturi Cola (which is synthetic in vibe but in a charming way like most Elkhaldi) it sidesteps the pitfalls of Follow and Velvet Rouge—both nice scent but with something slightly off, synthetic, about the coffee—and instead joins the ranks of Oud Luwak, which (although it brings in a peanut butter vibe) also handles coffee beautifully. Still, the coffee here is closer in ingredient quality to what we get in Little Song, another excellent execution.
You know how they make coffee ice cream? This is almost like a coffee-floral soap that some pyromaniac bedwetter was trying to set on fire before moving on, with his M-80 firecrackers, to the asshole of the house cat—the final element in the psychopathy trifecta.
This is less creamy and more coffee-forward than Mandodari2. Indeed, wearing side by side Mandodari2 has no coffee whatsoever until a few hours in—the biggest difference. Both give you a soapy vintage aldehydic sheen over a creamy tropical floral heart. But the creaminess and tropicality—leaning more into a carnal coconut direction—are stronger in Mandodari2. And in Mandodarix2 the floral elements really sing, especially with the added Jasmine Absolute and Orange Flower Absolute boosting the carnal quality of the civet into something closer to Dusita’s Oud Infini. On a side by side it is hard to choose a winner. Mandodari2 stays soapier longer whereas regular Mandodari stays more cumin-forward longer. That said, the evolved form is more animalic and queasy—queasy in the way of Overture Man—whereas the original is more spicy and dusty.
As my perfume journey has settled away from gathering and more into reflecting, I realize that while I like pretty much all things—even sweet gourmands—the floral-animalic chypres, even more so than their masculine leather-animalic counterparts, are my absolute favorites. It is amazing to reflect on the level of skank women wore decades back. It really is unbelievable—Golden Girl WAP.
I don’t know why I love smelling like a bombastic Cruella de Vil—a Cruella, yes, with an insane vabbing problem. But I absolutely do. It fits my personality. Before these sorts of terms were hijacked and politicized into nonsense by cancellers and SJWs, I would happily have identified as “two-spirit” in the Native American sense. I am a caregiver and homemaker who writes poetry, and yet I am interested in bodybuilding, sports, and bedroom dominance. Since I was very young, I had an inordinate fetish for pussy too. And I just like women. I could never whack it to a guy eating a girl out; a girl has to be eating the girl out. As I was telling my friends since fifth grade, I would be a trans lesbian before I would ever do sexual activity with a guy. I think that factors in somehow to my love of fragrances like these.
I don’t want to give the wrong impression here. Yes, this fragrance is glutted with girlie florals—sweet-tea champaca, coconut-pineapple frangipani, buttered-mushroom gardenia, labia-pleat tuberose—and an opium accord (smoky, dusty, resinous) that brings to mind girlie-bent perfumes such as my beloved Fiore D’Ambre. It also has a cumin note, one that hangs around until the end (contributing a dustiness to the leather and making it ruggedly butch). And yes, this cumin cannot help but evoke Rochas Femme just as its strong aldehydes in the beginning brings to mind Chanel No. 5. But still, even with all that, this fragrance—especially with the coffee, tobacco, and moss facets—is a lot more unisex than I have made it sound, more masculien than perhaps my favorite scent of all time: Salome.
A leather note emerges nicely. That, alongside the coffee and moss and civet and tropical florals, explains much of the overlap with Zoologist Civet in the base, just as the civet and aldehydes explain much of the overlap with Sacred Scarab earlier on.
Scent of the Morning 2: Mandodari Mandodari, by Prin
A sacred-rot floral-animalic orental fragrance right in the vein of one of my most favortie fragrances of all time: the sweeter and much less animalic Fiore D’Ambre. I love how here, albeit not as intensely as the original Mandodari, aldehydes flare open in a sandstorm of narcotic floral (centeral aroudn opium) before collapsing into civet-tobacco goo of resinous woods. It is smoky, sweaty, floral, leathery, mossy—luxury in decomposition. The number one difference between this and the original, and it actually might be important enough for me to keep both my bottles, is that Mandodar2 has very little of that dusty coffee impression that makes the original so good. I say “little” even though Madnodari2 has no coffee listed because I do still get faint impressions of coffee. This is more ambery and citrusy than Mandodari—and so it feels more like a cross between Civet and Camel, citrus fruity Amber somewhere between the two, with the opium of fiore d’ambre thrown in. One difference between these other scents and this is that it dries down to Prins dusty castoreum-adjacent leather common to many of his frags.
Opening is soapy, more soapy than the original—and, if you do not stick with the fragrance, this can lead to the impression that this is less grimy than the original, which arguably is not the case all things considered. There is a metallic aspect too, which is louder than the cumin (unlike the original where the cumin flies into the air along with coffee absolute). Still the metallic aspect has a breath—as in human mouth breath, to it. The citrus here is a showstopper—louder and more syrupy citrus than in the original), citrus with a metallic glint. Aldyhedes are less pronounced than original (hence less metal than original) but still there is a lift of sparking champagne soap. camphor is less present too, mainly outshone by dental clove, although I would say it adds a tad of ice to the aldehyde. nose-tingle Black pepper and clove is pretty much as prominent but not so with the cumin, which is why people who say this is less dirty than the original are right. Opening of the original is a bit more feverish, a cumin-coffee fever, whereas this is more of a torporific citrus. Mandodori2 is very citrusy (very oily tart citrus) and for that as well as the soapiness can seem less dirty than the original. But that is only at the beginning. As is it settles Mandodari2 is more animalic and oriental than the spicier-woodier original—this being in direct contrast to how Parfumo sees the difference between the two.
The florals are many here but they do not sing out in individual glory like they do in the original—instead the more so merge into the syrupy base of funk—yes, this goo is what Ensar would definiterly name “funk.” Champaca is here, connecting this to Fiona and to L’Huere Exquise: honeyed, oily, smoky-yellow, lush and heady, with narcotic weight. Jasmine absolute gives indolic richness to the point of almost fleshiness. Orange blossom: green, waxy, bitter-pollen brightness but with a clear waxy-perineal edge like in Oud Infini. Tuberose absolute add the expected rubbery, buttery, oily white petal—arguably not as rancid as in the original but maybe that is just the cumin veil that is really loud over the original. Garrdenia adds a mushroomy charactrer that is more rotlike in the original. Rose absolute—a deep red-petal note—giving a metallic form to the blur. The original is bridal flowers in decay where as this one is the same decayed flowers preserved in and oil—perhaps that is the best way to say the difference.
Civet is less piercing than in the original—it is more like the civet in Civet de Nuit—gooeier and smooth like old people skin. Opium is a favorite note of mine—although I like it best in Fiore D’ambre where it is explicitly narcotic but in both cases it gives, especially here, a sense of sloth. Ash—here it is mineral, charred wood, the scent of aftermath and that works well with the tobacco impression from both the tobacco absolute (honeyed, dry leaf smoke) and, another conenction to Fiore D’Ambre, the ambergris (salty, marine, animalic diffusion that makes the tobacco seem salty sweet and damp, not to far from what I get in Sir Winston).
The foundation is so creamy. Sandalwood gives a butteriness—almost urinary in tone for a feel like Zoologist Civet. I am sure the same sandalwood is in both. But the sandalwood here seems more like mysore (ghee-like) whereas the sandalwood in regular Mandodari seems more like Timor (wood dust and airy brightness with green aromatics). Then we have teak wood giving a dry, leathery, aromatic, old-furniture woodiness, which is important to keeping this connected to the original Mandodari. Oakmoss adds the usual: bitter-green leatheriness as well as, especially with the patchouli synergism, forest-floor density—albeit here it seems much more smothered than the original in a goo of sal tree resin (incensey sacred-smoke quality) and of course labdanum (resinous and sticky, it is like a tar in which the opening citrus sticks and remains hours in just like the grapefruit of Overture Man does).
My references are limited but from what I can imagine after watching a lot of Ramsey, this would probably be close to Bal à Versailles or Tabu—Bal à Versailles or Tabu if they’d been built inside a temple pyre. Indeed, I am seeing a lot of that in Prin, and it is perhaps why the Wafts from the Lofts guys like him so much: he is giving an exotic Thai spin on so many of the greats. Tirtha, for instance, is clearly a Thai Yatagan. And then is Kheerin is a Thai Bel Ami. I do live the vintage feel and it is a really positive thing that this scent is in close family resemblance with Civet and Camel and Fiore D’ambre—I love them all.
TDLR on the difference between the two Mandodaris. The OG Mandodari—west-coast outward turned—is more dusty and spicy, a coffee note not too far from what we see in Little Song. The flanker—east-coast inward turned—is more resinous and animalic, a queasy feel not too far from Overture Man. But really these are hairsplitting differences, and the differences really start to collapse into a Midwestern middle once the flanker dries down enough not to be so swallowed by its own goo. Both are chypre twists on the more feminine Fiore.
*Let's workshop this poem about a father's moment of reflection--worried and yet hopeful--on the complexities of parenthood and the passage of time while watching his child board a school bus.
*I added a line to each stanza. It has gotten to a point where any edit is a high risk, by which I mean there is a good chance that any adjustment I will mar the poem. But still, like Whitman, I must tinker.
Air Brakes
Soon he will trudge up the steps of the school bus thinking nothing of me—that runaway asymmetry, already it has gathered seat-clutching momentum. Still so tender, still so tethered to my side, as he is now though, even on the moodiest mornings (rare, I tell myself) my son is sure to take a window seat—
as in the days of high-pitch waves, my singsong range (“Love ya, Killa!”) and his nose puttied against glass— where I can see him at least in profile from the stoop. And from under that hiding hoodie still those eyes, through the tint no more perceptible than a wish, will cut to mine at the lunging hiss of the air brakes.
“We need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.”—Kafka (against the safe-space cancel culture pushed by anti-art bullies, left and right)
