Mr. Haldol (ROUND 1)
scent of the day: Soul of My Soul, by Elkhaldi
Only third wear and sloppy notes—so still take this with a grain of salt.
Coming with a multicolored array of roses (although pinks and purples flash through the otherwise molasses color I get from the whole composition) and a whole bunch of oud (although the dominant impression is fermented hay and cheese rind, both rich with sun), Soul of My Soul reads to me like a zoom in on the sweet earthy side of Malik al-Taif by Areej le Dore. Even in the first hour we are very close to the mid of Malik. That—the mulchy-ferment (more salty and cheesy than varnish and leather, although all these elements are present)—brings it even closer to Attainment 2 by Amphora Exotica. Even though Soul of My Soul’s oud melange beats out those other two easily, Malik (a more sandalwood-incense take on oud-rose) and Attainment (a more spicy-piney take on oud-rose) might be better crafted—Attainment the likely winner on that front. My take, and a rather silly diagnostic, is that if Soul if My Soul speaks to you more than these other two, you really need to start swiping attars and oud oils if you are not already. More than either of the three, and this is because of its spotlight on oud, it speaks to that sort of fragrance user most. Indeed, it comes off very much like several Yaaseen attars in my collection.
The earthiness of Soul of My Soul grows but in a more vegetal rooty sweet direction, with hints of the unstoppably gorgeous Nectar Royale paste—a fruity-queasy link to Violette Iriani. If Sultan Pasha is the king of attars (which is what is said even though my journey carved a path away from his work), then Maher is the king of pastes. The blending with Maher tends to be muddy like many artisanal perfumers (save Bortnikoff and Ensar). It is so muddy in many that it makes Prin’s work look suit-and-tied. But Maher’s leaning on these core pastes, or whatever that core DNA is, nearly makes that muddiness “flaw” no big deal. Indeed, for those of us who like a lo-fi and garage-band sound full of imperfections (as opposed to the sort of clean perfection we fine in say Geza Schoen or Corticiotto in the niche realm or Bortnikoff and Ensar in the artisanal), this muddiness will be added charm like it is in the case of Pinoy Sirun. For what it is worth, Sundar from Amphora strikes a really good balance between craft and that authentic indie feel—just right in the middle: decent blending (but not so masterful to seem inauthentic and buttoned up and schooled, which is the direction Ensar is going in) and yet also quality ingredients (but not so quality that it can compete with Ensar).
Attainment seems crafted with a more skilled hand than Soul of My Soul. But the oud there in Attainment (barn-leather Indian whose carnality is boosted by civet and musk) is more of the popular sort people first learn of when entering the artisanal space. For that reason it can come off less unique, more generic. Soul of My Soul gives us oud fireworks that rival what we get in Ensar. Attainment has more of that barn animal in pine forest feel (pineyness brought by frankinsence, Siberian musk). But the ouds here in Soul (Sri Lankan, Thai, Papuan, Burmese) together push the rose into that molasses-rum texture and mossy myrhh sweetness like in Bilal 2—both scents having that sweet boozy queasiness. That makes it different from the waxy texture (Bushman candle) and leathery metallics (castoreum) we get in Attainment. Anyone who likes Bilal and Yaaseen’s style of composition in general will like Elkhaldi a lot. They seem made for one another and should do a joint release. That would rock the fragrance community most definitely.
I brought up Bilal 2 as a point of connection. Several fragrances in Yaaseen’s oeuvre seem linked to this one in spirit: Bilal 2 (molasses, rum, spiced plum), Qutaibah (tea sweeted with a honey-molasses blend), and Khong City (smoked leather, rum, cotton candy). Bilal 2 is probably the closest smell I have encountered to Soul of My Soul, though I need much more time with my rather rich collection before saying that with confidence. That proximity has much to do with the rose mélange. Both fragrances are centered around Taifi rose and move away from the Damask prettiness of Qutaibah. Both contain a tension between light and dark, yet ultimately bend decisively toward the latter. In Soul of My Soul, the contrast is between a bright Caucasian/Persian-style rose and a deeply spicy, almost carnation-like Taifi rose. In Bilal 2, there is a similar tension is there: citrusy-deewy Bulgarian meets Gallica raisin. Neither fragrance presents rose as a pristine floral object. Instead, the flower is shadowed and thickened by surrounding materials. Where Qutaibah celebrates the beauty of the rose itself (at least comparatively, because this bastard does have that molasses throughline too), Bilal 2 and Soul of My Soul—well, the perfumers behind them—seem fascinated by what happens when the implacable beauty of rose is pulled into darker territory—the image that come to my mind is of the unicorn in the 1985 film Legend after the world has ben swallowed by winter night.
The ouds especially are where Soul of My Soul sings. At least on that one vector, the oud vector, Soul of My Soul makes Malik and Attainment feel not only less opulent but generic and even quaint in comparison. For one, it makes the superamber generic-incense base of the Areej stand out like a sore thumb. And second, it makes us say about Attainment at the drydown: “Really, fucking indian oud and castor—again?”
Yes, niche and designers are held on a tight leash by the big aromachemical companies and their lobbists, who—as a means to force perfumers to turn to the big aromachemical houses for ingredients (how sick can you get?)—go through great efforts to get innocuous naturals (like oakmoss) banned on the basis of incredibly low standards (a small rash in two percent of the population) under questionable conditions (leave the material on your skin under a bandage undisturbed for days on end)—as much effort as tobacco companies once did to raise skepticism for the connection between cigarettes and lung cancer. Artisanal houses are not held by such a tight leash. But that does not mean that there is not a lot of genericness here too: forced releases working with same 5 core ingredients (rose, oud, musk, sandalwood, ambergris) that seem to be as much a requirement for a perfume to be artisanal as an infinity scarf is to be a woke SJW on campus.
Soul of my Soul is no exception here. It comes off as somewhat generic in the artisanal space. Sycophants especially might find a difference-in-kind level of uniqueness compared to what we see in Maher’s other rose works: Silk Rose, the Ghazali releases, Dukkan, and the crazy hyped Qinan Rose. I can say that it is unique among these (although I have not smelled Qinan). And while one could cite how the roses here seem to hit you with a variety of colors (pink and red, yellow and orange, even white and green), it is run of the mill when you pan back a bit. It does not have that newness like TSVGA once brought or that apparently Wasif Reza now brings (his Peau d’orris Gold definitely lives up to the hype). This makes sense, though. Not only do we get the core ingredients of artisanal theater here in Soul of My Soul, in the deep drydown we get that matchstick oudiness that nearly a 100 of my fragrances give me.
In order to rein in my claims about Soul of My Soul’s genericness, however, we should consider the following four points. (1) Everything is generic on some level—and that is precisely what makes the claims as to the one-of-a-kind inimitableness of the Quran a joke even when we bracket off our awareness of the sampling soul of all human artistry and even when we brack off its clear historical influences. The point is metaphysical. Everything has some level of commonality with other things beyond it—and, indeed, at the deepest levels with everything else. Humans have in common with squid for example that they are carbon based. Humans have in common with silicone-based creatures on, say, a planet of Vega that they are material. Only that which is utterly alien to anything else (ab-solus, cut-off and alone being alone), only that which has nothing in common with anything else according to every way of looking at it (how God is viewed according to some with a negative theology bend), would not be generic. This point, while relevant, does not rescue Soul of My Soul too much. After all, even on more everyday senses of the term (where, for example, Purple Kinam would be highly unique in the artisanal space), Soul of My Soul is generic. (2) This ashy matchstick drydown—one of the big grounds for my calling Soul of My Soul generic—only seems played to me since I have smelled and own a whole bunch of quality Ensars, and these tend to have that drydown. (3) Whereas Ensars themselves so often tend to come with a castoreum quality to the matchstick dry down, here we get this envelop of elven fruity glow. It is a magical aroma that is based off the in-house pastes somehow. And it is much louder and more prominent—one might even say to a cloying degree—in Violette Iriani. Assuming no synthetics here, one charm of that paste-base core—Maher’s signature, straightup on its own one of the best aromas I have ever smelled (and in the running for the best thing ever to hit perfumery in my book)—is that it does something very similar (elven, glowy, aquatic) that we see from Sultan Pasha releases like Sacred Scarab and from Prin’s and Rajesh’s Haxan and from Corticiotto’s Mal-Aime. Only here in Soul of My Soul the sweet watery glow, which I struggle to put my finger on definitley but it is violet in color to my mind, is coming from non-lab materials and has this absolutely lovely mineralic feel to it (almost like an ambergris accord that blooms from the combo of mineralic rose and furry musk and salty papuan oud). (4) The oud styles and oud quality—that is another glimmer of uniqueness here, especially with that indomitable Elkhaldi base of the paste material.
Yes, the ouds here are the star. In Malik the rose is star. In Attainment the composition as a whole is the star (an oud-rose balance that imparts an extreme spiritualism. Here in Soul of My Soul the oud is the star, especially as seen through that sweet animalic lense of the paste. In this way it is more like how Ensar frames Ensar’s Rose verses his other rose releases like Sultan White Rose or Sultan Red Rose or so on: instead of being an oud lens on rose, it is a rose lense on oud—rose the means and oud the end, as opposed to the other way around. I am not as convinced of this thought as I was when I first fore it. It might be more rose-oud balance like Attainment than I first thought. What gives me reservation is the possibility that the earthiness fo the rose I am categorizing more as a contriobution of the oud. But I do still think that it is bent more, if only slightly, toward a focus on oud.
Four main terroirs of oud are on display and the collective effect of them all with the roses is almost like that of fruity-boozy Cambodian I know from Yaaseen (even though no Cambodian ouds are in here). Sri Lankan (Silani) oud, which comes off like yuzu and vetiver and fern all in one, gives us a refreshing bitterness—that of a lemon-herb black tea. Thai (Khao Yai) oud, which comes off like fruity tobacco, gives us a decayed wood feel with slight hints (not as much as I get in other trats) of root-beer sarsaparilla. Papuan oud, which comes off as guava and mineralic here, gives us a 20-40-40 cross between Merauke’s peaty-swamp facet of swamps, Port Moresby’s electric-eucalyptus facet of coasts, and Wamena’s coniferous-mineral facet of mountains. Burmese oud, which comes off as blackstrap molasses (the least sweet and most bitter and mineralic), gives us a 30-30-40 cross between Indonesia-style incensey woods, Hanain-style mildew, and dusty Indian cheesy funk. And yes, especially thin the beginign ther eis a bit of cheese, sort of like the hint of cheese I get in Ensar’s Oud Rex—another distant connection to this fragrance, althoguyh I will say that Rex feels much more like a traditional perfume whereas Soul (just as in Oud Session) feels more like a sprayable attar).
These new Elkhaldis need to sit. People started selling these off like hot stones right away—especially Kasturi Cola. But I always like to give frags like these much more time. I mean, I have had Ensars come to me utterly travel shocked (shaken, full of bubbles that effect how top-notes come off: flat, weak, less integrated) and might even need to mature a bit in bottle from some oxygen and even some esterification. After time—patience paying off—they opened up. Even your mood and expectations can color how you perceive it. Often too, although this applies more to newbs in the journey, your brain literally needs to learn to smell these things. These Elkhaldis especially need time because the ouds in them are quite unique and give off aromas that aficionados can learn to appreciate.
Soul of My Soul, again, stresses the earthiness of the classic rose-oud combo. Malik started off very bright with its rose—cocoa-powdered bright rose but over time people have noticed, and I have noticed my own bottle, that it has gotten very earthy and mixed with a more melted chocolate feel. Soul of My Soul jumps, as I said, right to the earthiness: it has an under-dirt feel almost. That said, Soul of My Soul—unlike both Attainment and Malik—is much less brown in color when it comes to vibe. That is another distinguishing mark. It comes off purple—like imagine a guave-spiked molasses with a strong violet tinge.
One thing I dislike about the house is the Aaron-Terrence-Hughes style cult-like aura: thin-skinned perfumer and a rabid fanbase ready to pounce to protect that skin—this whole atmosphere, palpable throughout the Facebook groups, that makes you feel bad to criticize the house or the perfumer. However much I rag on a house like Jinx for the whole hipster throwback aesthetic of fake blue-collarism (the East Coast version of Portlandia anchor tattoos), that is rather innocuous compared to the big Donald Trump energy that comes from the Elkhaldi house: you must use the very right language and follow all these rules—or else. That narcissistic totalitarian way of being is as overcompensating as a red sports car and a toupe. One would hate to be an employee at such a house. Days off would be filled with dread about have to go back in—the silver lining you whipser to yourself “At least I am not the boss’s wife.” Silencing and shaming in order to control a narrative, which is what we see here (even if soft and indirect and merely suggested, which is all the more HR and bureaucratic and disgusting), always turns me off.
*Let's workshop this poem about the agonizing strain of a teacher performing sanity on his first day back to a school that knows he just left the psychiatric ward.
Mr. Haldol
There you stand one Monday morning, greeting students with a banker’s handshake
at the door after weeks of subs— bushy-tailed but, for these first minutes, reining in
that jazz they loved: the whole school knows you have come fresh from the nuthouse.
“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)
