Helas

I hunted down a bottle of this one based on the gorgeous description and I'm glad I did. Singing Moon is my perfect outdoors scent. On first application, it is sharp and mineral with a faint spark of ozone in the background, and evokes to me cliffs towering above a stormy sea. The grass and herbal notes emerge upon drydown; they are very sweet but in a wild and unkempt sort of way, and remind me of raw clover honey. The ozone note is discernible but remains in the background. The atmosphere is wild, smoky, and mysterious. This is how I would imagine the Giants' Causeway in Ireland would smell like on an autumn night. I am fascinated by the atmospheric BPAL blends but find a lot of them to be too strange to be wearable. Singing Moon is atmospheric AND perfectly acceptable for everyday wear. I can see myself craving this one a lot once fall comes around. A poem in scent form. 5 out of 5 stars.

Belladonna is mostly peppermint and vetiver on me with an unidentified herbal note - perhaps sage - and a discreet base of patchouli. It's green and exuberant and bitter and a little earthy, very much like an overgrown garden. Unfortunately, the throw is very light and the scent fades on me in about an hour. I enjoy it though - it's comforting and a bit nerdy in a botanical sort of way. The oil colour is a pale yellowish green - I was expecting a bright kelly green from the enthusiastic reviews and was a tad disappointed. Oh well! Rating: 4/5

I was lured into trying Banded Sea Snake by the reviews that compare it to Lyonesse mixed with Snake Oil, since Lyonesse is probably my all-time favourite perfume at this point and I want to try all the scents that are like it. I haven't tried Snake Oil yet (blasphemy, I know). Upon application, I was a bit disappointed. I don't get any ozone from this one, nor do I get sea moss. Banded Sea Snake is damp to me, but not aquatic - more like breathing in the green scent of a patch of moss after a rainfall. There is also a hint of something that evokes spicy wood to me, I suppose the spices from the Snake Oil, and a bitter drizzle of olive, and a waft of vanilla sweetness. Once I got over my disappointment over it being nothing like Lyonesse, I started enjoying this one a lot. It's a clean, organic mossy vanilla scent, laid-back and natural and not at all cloying. Edited to add: over time, this has grown into a new favourite. It's incredibly sexy, haunting and dark and I always get compliments while wearing it. An easy five stars.

Olokun is one of the cheeriest and most natural aquatics I have ever smelled. I love traditional ozoney aquatics, but even I will admit that they usually smell more like dryer sheets than like the sea (I just happen to enjoy the smell of dryer sheets.) Olokun, however, smells just like a sunny afternoon at the Caribbean beach, salty and sunny and wet with the usual faint tang of ozone and a touch of melon. I loved Cthulhu but found it a tiny bit too cologney. Olokun is just like Cthulhu, but lighter and more organic. I love it and foresee it will become my "clean" perfume of choice. Four out of five stars.

I ordered a sample of this one because I expected a sweet, inoffensive perfume that I could wear at work from the list of ingredients. I was thrown off-kilter once I had tried it on - it is definitely one of those high-concept scents that are more evocative than wearable. The sandalwood is the strongest note here. Sandalwood tends to smell very dry and "dead" to me, compared to the lush greenness of other woods like vetiver or pine. The sandalwood in this blend is particularly dry and brings to mind images of a fossilized Nepalese forest. The mango and mandarin, on the other hand, are vivid and buoyant but much more sour than sweet. The contrast between the lively fruits and the dead woods does evoke life in death to me, and the overall spicy sourness of the blend makes for an aggressive and unusual perfume with a slight Asian atmosphere. It's a striking illustration of the concept of Chinese zombies, but I find it a bit too high-pitched for regular wear. I got more than I bargained for here. Three out of five stars.

I can't help for the rest, but Ophelia and Lyonesse are like Water of Notre Dame to me. Ophelia is very similar, except sweeter and more floral. Lyonesse is alike more in terms of its "feel" than in its actual smell - it's a very gentle, feminine aquatic. Glasgow is maybe a tiny bit like Bewitched, but Bewitched is a lot darker.

The complexity of the Hanging Gardens kills it for me; I can't help but think it would have been twice as good with half the ingredients. The various fruits and flowers do not get their individual turn to shine but instead melt together to form this pleasant-smelling but undistinguished fruity-flowery mush. Instead of evoking a lush ancient Middle-Eastern tropical garden, it evokes an image of eating fruit salad in an English garden. Nice enough - and I certainly can't say it smells bad - but not nearly as rich or evocative as the name suggests. Generic pretty. Three out of five stars.

The initial phase of Perversion is an eerily perfect evocation of a summer's night out at the nearest Irish pub: cheap booze and leftover suntan lotion and clothes pregnant with stale cigarette smoke. It's an interesting scent experience and brings back some good memories, but it's not very wearable. The drydown, however, smells like pure pheromones. The booze notes fade away, which makes me glad since I'm not particularly fond of them. What's left is a creamy base of tonka and coconut sexed up with a hint of leather and a thin curtain of smoke. I was a bit worried when I read in the reviews that this had coconut, but the coconut here has a very interesting vibe - it's a less fruity, browner coconut, more like a slab of exotic wood than like a pina colada. This one is great for wearing on dates where you mean business; I wouldn't wear it to a job interview, though. Four out of five stars.

I thought that the drydown on Old Demons of the First Class smelled a lot like bonfire ash... I used to make campfires pretty much every summer and the perfume gives me smell-induced memories. I may be the odd one out on this one though, since none of the other reviewers mention fire or ash.

I normally dislike honey, but Osun is gorgeous. The honey here is sweet, but not cloying. The green herbal notes keep it from becoming foody and give it a perfect tropical island atmosphere. I can also smell the faintest aquatic note in the background, although that may just be my imagination. The final result is light, cool, and refreshing: a summer breeze in perfume form. Now that it is winter, I like to smell it to remember that summer is just around the corner. When summer comes, I can see myself slathering it on before heading to the beach. Four out of five stars.

Masquerade is dominated by an extremely raw, bitter patchouli and by the citrus tang of the orange blossom. The carnation is faint and the ambergris never shows up for me, which makes me sad because I love ambergris. The initial wet phase of the perfume is very strong and one of the few that hurts my throat a little when I smell it. The mix of bitter patchouli with sour orange comes across as too acrid to me without a sweet note to balance it out. The feel of the perfume is dirty, earthy, and rough, and I have trouble associating it with the aristocratic Italian ball I envisioned when I heard the name. Elegance and mystery are nowhere to be found in this masquerade, which makes me think more of a club of low-budget furry aficionados rough-and-tumbling it in the middle of the woods. Masquerade dries down to plain but rather pleasant patchouli. I'm keeping it for the drydown phase, and to wear in case I ever get invited to the aforementioned furry forest orgy (unlikely, but a gentleman ought always be prepared even for the improbable.) Three out of five stars.

I have a degree in philosophy, and was really looking forward to try all the Greece-themed scents since ancient Greece was the birthplace of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Unfortunately, upon trying Delphi, I am forced to conclude that the ancient Greeks may have been the fathers of Western civilisation, but they sure smelled terrible. Delphi smells like rotten tomatoes. Correction - Delphi smells like rotten tomatoes after they have been allowed to macerate at the back of the vegetable drawer, in the company of a string of moldy garlic and a decomposing onion. Not only is this perfume nauseatingly bad, but it CLINGS. I had to wash it off with rubbing alcohol, and the living room stank for the next twelve hours. I think the bay and the laurel are what gives me the "tomato" impression, since I associate them with Italian cooking and pasta sauce in particular. The honeyed wine is strong and sickly sweet and probably giving me the impression of rot. If you think the idea of a savoury perfume is genius, you might like this one, but keep in mind that your coworkers will probably hate you. If I wanted to smell this, I would open my fridge. One out of five stars.

In the bottle, this is very faint and almost odourless. On my skin, my first thought was: evil Dr. Pepper! I believe it is the combination of the vanilla-like tonka with the spices that gives me the impression of a particularly wicked can of soda. Fortunately, the tonka and spices mellow down as they dry and the musk and woody note come to the forefront. At this point, I get smell-induced memories of sitting around the campfire at summer camp. The tonka, opoponax, and clove mimic with an eerie accuracy the sweet, spicy scent of burning wood and of those little grey flecks of ash that the wind blows in your face when you sit close to the fire pit. The pepper is the only thing that doesn't fit in with the familiar picture. The end result isn't a nice, tame campfire, but a wild midsummer night bonfire spiced with a handful of black magic and a lot of mischief. Beautiful and unlike anything in the mainstream perfume industry. Four out of five stars.

My experience so far has been that the scents I dislike the most have the strongest throw and the longest duration. I hated Delphi, Lilith, and Antikythera Mechanism, and had to wash them off me with rubbing alcohol, because they wouldn't leave with plain water and soap. My living room smelled like rotting tomatoes, grape Kool-Aid and moldy bread respectively for a good twenty-four hours afterwards. Love Schrodinger's Cat and Dragon's Reverie, but they only stay for an hour or so (and close to the skin) before doing the vanishing act. So sad

This one was a freebie in my first order of BPAL, and it turned out to be my favourite of the lot and one of my all-time favourite scents. In the vial, King of Hearts smells exactly like cherry-flavoured cough syrup. On my skin, the lavender is the dominant note, followed by rose. The cherry starts out very strong and almost eye-wateringly sweet at first, but it mellows over time and eventually dissolves into the florals, making them redder and juicier. The musks (mostly white musk) follow the opposite progression; they start out imperceptible and acquire strength as the time goes by, until I am left, in the evening, with a sweet, musky lavender. In its cherry-dominant phase, King of Hearts is quirky, playful, and exuberant. In the musky lavender phase, it is laid-back and quietly sexy. This perfume is androgynous in the best sense of the word. Instead of confining itself to neutral scents that offend neither men nor women, it emphasizes the vivid contrast between the coolly masculine lavender and the voluptuously feminine rose. Women who are comfortable with their masculine side, men who enjoy their feminine side, and everyone who delights in ambiguity should adore this one. An oddball classic. Five out of five stars.