Mosh Pit (ROUND 2)
scent of the day: Rhinoceros, by Zoologist
Rhinoceros (2020, Prin Lomros)—a tobacco-booze leather chypre that, precisely by embodying the “unapologetic” attitude of “don’t ask permission” (the fuck-the-law bravado of its marketing blurb), ends up dramatically undermining the intended scene (a “dusty territory” of “unrelenting sun” where a proud but “ornery rhinoceros . . . stands strong, defending his domain”) into something more appropriate for a fragrance named “Rhino Horn” or “Rhino Poacher” or “Roosevelt’s Rhino”)—
evokes a human-centered savannah, one quite unsettling when compared to the relatively cutesy intent (a jarring feel sort of like when Mexican donkey-porn filler spills out from the final bat swing of the birthday pinata, parents eventually catching on to the fact that everyone stopped gathering candy), where rugged big game hunters (Teddy Roosevelt is the perfect image) light up cigars clenched between their smiling teeth and pop a bottle of brown spirits (heavily-honeyed, whatever it is) in post-hunt celebration right after rifling down a mega-horned rhino (the dust from the terror stampede still in the air), a vivid image in my mind that the note pyramid helps make clear:
(1) sharp basil and sweet vernal grass, muddled with oakmoss and patchouli to make for Lomros’s signature murky (near-decayed) greenery, grounds the fragrance in grassy plains (a nod to the rhino’s trampled grazing territory);
(2) banana-like ylang-ylang injects a touch of humid lushness and exoticism that reinforces the sunny savannah setting;
(3) understated coffee, as if merely whisps on the breath, contributes a sense of wakefulness indicative of morning time and works with various other elements (especially booze and cigars) to center the human;
(4) citrusy pink pepper, which creates an intense aromatic frenzy in the opening (swirling all the other notes into a stampede-like chaos), imparts such a fiery bite that, perhaps in concert with the ashy incense and smokey oud and dusty tobacco, comes off as gunpowder discharge;
(5) the whisky-rum-tobacco trifecta, which comes out more and more as the coffee-pink-pepper adrenaline settles in the relief of conquest, quickly establishes a Tobacco-Oud-reminiscent celebratory tone (a toast and a cigar for a successful hunt), the dusty tobacco—the star of the show (unlike in the more leather forward first version of Rhino)—playing a crucial role in evoking the choking dust kicked up in the collision of human ambition and primal force;
(6) the smoky-ashy frankincense and the baked-mud-meets-boot-polish cypriol (which, with the Laotian oud, can read as desiccated compost in the treads of such boots) amplify the feel of stampede dust and acrid bite of spent gunpowder, the frankincense also having an adrenaline-lowering calming effect (which drives home that the hunt is over) and the cypriol also having an ointment-tincture aroma (which could suggest rudimentary field-dressing of wounds after a close call);
(7) animalic leather evokes worn boots and rifle slings and especially, with help from the cypriol, the thick hide of the downed prize (a rhino covered, as the cypriol reinforces, in its self-imposed sunscreen and insect barrier of dried mud);
(8) hay-poop Laotian oud plus the manure-like cypriol plus unstated animalics (it is hard to believe Mr. Goat Hair Skunk Accord, Prin Lomros, would restrict himself merely what is stated in the official note listing) work with the decaying greenery to suggest that, in the sphincter-loosened stillness of death, the rhino’s guts—bloated with fermenting mulch—release a fecal detritus of digested grasses onto the sun-scorched ground;
(9) the amber in the base, although contributing to the honeyed aspect of the booze (especially in the opening minutes), creates a feel—deep into the dry down (after the dust has settled and the men have departed with all their larger-than-life bravado)—of a golden sunset shining down on a hornless hunk of smokey hide, the sun a mute witness to the afterglow of carnage it made possible—
the overall effect being a spicy-earthy fragrance that, with fungal oakmoss and minty patchouli bringing a mothball mustiness to a profile otherwise similar to what we get in honey-tobacco staples like Naxos and Sundowner, strikes a nice balance between the dirty-and-unshaven depression of Meo Fusciuni’s Buio (aggressive with bitter pungency like T-Rex, Iron Duke,and Moth) and the shaved-and-chiper smileyness of Rogue’s Bonded (a secret tipple in a 1950’s tax office) into something represented perhaps best in the figure of Teddy Roosevelt.
Mosh Pit
Even gorilla parents fold their lips over their teeth while nibbling on toddler limbs—
perhaps, pestered by the ear-pulling rompery of clumsy flesh (pathetic in its fragility),
this being, as with us, a precarious placation of that flirty appetite to bite clean through.
