Three Lip Bites (ROUND 1)
SCENT OF THE DAY: Attainment 2, by Amphora Exotica
Attainment is very good. It likely bests Triad and Oud Maximus and many others. It gives us an EO 3 rugosa rose with smooth indian oud and a surprise blast of musk—all on a waxy-vanillic bed of bushman candle and spiced with saffron just like in vespers. My Sultan White Rose Afgannisimo comes to mind as well: both share a bright, dewy, stemmy rose whose greenery is amplified by omani frankinscence and thrown by ambergris—only the Ensar stays very bright with its clean ouds and costus sheen whereas Attainment adds in a dark and spicy rose with velvety and peppery-smoky-earthy aspects are amplified by a more growling dirty oud.
People sell this stuff not realizing that it is right on up there with the best. Do not let labels or FOMO trick your nose. Castoreum synergizes with the hindi oud and saffron for a grand leather effect that smells different than what you get at the base of many artisinals. The rose and the frankinscence combine for a really lemony effect given extra trumpet sun-glint brassiness by the civet and saffron. The ambergris and musk and spices give a salty cloud of pheromonic pull anchored down by a creamy sandalwood and bushman candle—a lovely tension between dusty and milky. Really this is a masterclass in balancing tensions: bright and dark, animal and resin, dry and milky. The Kashmiri saffron is so unbelievably good here, like it is in Vespers. Sundar is known as the Saffron Don for a reason!
Three Lip Bites
From the bus window, wringing the brown-bag textbook to a muggy bow, you watch
your ninth-grade crush sag against a car vibrating bass— a durag thug (former security
here) palming her ass like property, a “fuck you” to up-all-night plans to walk her home.
“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)
