Reverse Passing, Beyond Slang and Swagger, Shatters the Gaslight (ROUND 1)
scent of the day: Ghazali Finalé, by Elkhaldi
This is a musky rose oud—with musk as the star here, then. It is tremendous. The musk here, like many o have smelled from Elklhaldi, lacks the harpsichord grandeur of Ensar. Instead it goes much more in an electric guitar direction—think: Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. There are not synthetic musks used here to my understadning. Although having the pheromonic aura and furry aroma you can only get from real musk grains, the musk trifecta here radiates with the punch and longevity of the synthetic ones we find in fragrances like Prin’s Persephone or Amouage’s Silver Oud oer Zoologist Civet—some of my favorite frags even if they are a mockery of the real deal Holyfield (a mockery in the same way that Pazuzu making Regan spiderwalk down the staircase is a mockery God’s having created humans in his image). The musk trifecta here is a chocolatey-truffle pelt aroma from the buttery-fungal Tibetan Musk, the inky-cedary Kashmiri musk, and the frosty-coniferous Siberian musk
What is interestign is that despite having more of a link to the synthetic sphere in that way, the whole composition seems way more artisinal in feel than any of Ensar’s stuff. Ensar’s stuff is just way too polished, at least now. Elkhaldi has that roughhewn vibe like we get from TSVGA—not as garage band lo-fi as Pinoy but not as slick as Ensar or especially Bortnikoff (the slickest of the bunch). This is my style of perfumery. I mean much of this stuff shoots to the top of my list. Take Ambergris Myanmar, of which I only have a small decant: it’s opening might be the best in my entire collection.
This is extremely animalic and yet without being—like some of my other beloved Elkhaldis—rank or rotten or fermented. I really love musky oudy florals (Ensar’s Musk Gardenia for example) and here we have one that does apricot-cream champaca and candied rose. I think it is the champaca and milky sandalwood base that really makes me think of TSVGA releases like Fiona. The similarity here is not just in feel but in base aroma.
The oud here is dark and it can also be found in much more recessive from in Violette Iriani: a Nagaland Indian oud that goes less barnstraw-cowpat than cherry-molasses-tobacco-in-a-leather-pouch Nagaland.
The rose is the opposite of crystaline and glinting. Any oxides and soap that you might expect from rose are either not here or are buried in the velvetiness and jam that results from how the grape-stem May rose interacts with the leather trifecta of damascena varieties: spiced-syrup Turkish rose, honeyed-pear Bulgarian, and a jammy-clovey Moroccan Rose.
Reverse Passing, Beyond Slang and Swagger, Shatters the Gaslight
In a white-punking era when even rednecks pray for the blessings of a black 23andMe
(systemic immunity, career and sexual opportunity, leeway in speech and movement),
luckily wiping off Dolezal bronzer helps only in places that cannot spell “digital trail.”
“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)
