Lurid

[lorajc]

LURID -

Shocking, horrific, fierce, savage, sensationalized, luminous and hazy: black currant, Bulgarian lavender and white musk with a dollop of thick resin and a voltaic charge of ozone notes.

 

I don't know about shocking and horrifc, but this is one of those BPAL scents that drawns you in. When you first sniff it, you might find it odd and yet alluring in some way. You keep trying to think of a way to describe it or pull out a certain note and you can't but something in the scent makes you start liking it more and more. You're strangely intrigued and baffled at the same time and then the scent just starts becoming addicting to you and you must have it. This is what Lurid is to me. Now....if you pinned me down and forced me to pull out specific notes, I would probably say that the black currant is noticeable, although not prominment and not at all **too fruity**. It strangely mixes with the lavendar and other notes to make a very unique and mysterious blend. I think I'm going to have to purchase a 5 ml. It just keeps sucking at my brain and luring me in.

 

Also, for those of you who are frightened by the OZONE word -- this is not aquatic at all. I think it is only ozone in the sense of the slight voltaic charge -- that must be the part that's sucking at my brain. I must go now before it eats up too many more brain cells. I need all I have left. LOL

 

ETA: I really cannot say enough how truly unique this one is. If you want a signature scent that won't come close to anyone on the street. Get this. If you dare to be different, get this!! I'll shut up now (I'm rambling).

Edited September 17, 2007 by clover

[summer]

Wow, this is definitely unique, but yet still "user friendly" if you know what I mean. I smell the ozone, but it is a sweet, sexy ozone, if you can believe that such a thing is possible! The musk and sweet, earthy fruitiness really cling to the skin, but there is this kind of rough edge to it; almost a "tang." It's really difficult to describe, but, as I said, it's by no means "weird." The bottom line is that it smells good. It's definitely not an "OMFG I must have gallons" scent for me, but I would enjoy wearing this scent out and about in the city. It is a great pounding-the-urban-streets perfume.

[LiberAmoris]

I was really looking forward to Lurid even though I was leery of the ozone. The description just seemed so...dynamic. And I love black currant.

 

I'm not disappointed. It's an even mix of black currant, lavender and white musk on me, with underpinnings of what smells a little like patchouli or amber and of course, a big bolt of ozone. The ozone definitely makes the blend a bit 'perfumey' as it imparts that distinctive odor, but it is offset by the currant and lavender. This is one of those blends that makes me a happy BPALer, because it is just so creative and unique.

 

Lurid waffles a bit on my skin, going a tad 'soapy' at times but then redeeming itself by broadcasting black currant and Beth's yummy white musk. This one is just too curious to give up, though. Definitely a keeper.

[shelldoo]

in the vial:lavander and musk

 

wet: lavander, musk, and a hint of something sweet. as i move my hand away from my nose i get a whiff of light ozone, but it is not overpowering

 

as it dries, this is indeed unique. it is very well blended. the lavander and musk are the foremost recognizable notes. but if i inhale deeply i get a hint of sweetness. and a hint of something almost smokey in nature. it also has a clean feel i am assuming is from the ozone. which btw is not an in your face kind of ozone. i am not an ozone fan and yet i like this scent

[tinyvulture]

i was curious to try this because the ingredients sounded like such a jumble. ozone, lavender and currant? but i never do well with ozone. sadly, this smells like a typical, commercial men’s cologne on me. it’s clean and crisp from the ozone, but there’s also the floral scent of lavender, and the earthy, slightly spicy resin. i can’t smell any currant. i'm sure this will smell much better on someone else.

[undergroundwoman]

I fricking love Lurid. Everytime I think the currant is too sweet, the wonderful lavender spices it up and kicks it away. The ozone behaves itself quite nicely and I think people who like Vinland might like this... there's a certain element of it in there. I tried going out to the beach to run with this on one arm and Vinland on the other. Both went really well with the pounding waves and wind and pine trees and mist. However, I can't run. Running on sand is not the best way to start out when I haven't been running in forever. So I hiked the three miles instead. Anyway, Lurid is sort of cleaner and more air/water than Vinland--Vinland has more greenery, woods, and flowers along with the ozone and berries. I wish I got more of the white musk, since apparently I love white musk because I would have Oisin's babies if I could. It does peek through from time to time. I don't pick up much resin, which is fine by me. This reminds me of something from my past, but I know not what.

 

Did I mention I love this stuff? It also is slightly akin to Thunderbird (which I love but can be overload on ozone) and Glasgow (nice idea, but went dish-soapy on me). I have decided that Lurid kind of also smells like the Dagoba chocolate with lavender and blueberries tastes... but without the chocolate. Maybe I should acquire some Bliss and test that out.

[coulrophobe]

Huh... I was worried about the lavender and ozone in this blend making it too strong and harsh, but now that I'm trying it on, I can barely smell it.

 

At first, I get a faintly smoky skin-scent... gradually, a faint fruit/berry scent peeks out, and there's a tiny hint of soap. Not what I expected at all - this is staying so close to my skin that it's practically being absorbed.

 

I think I'll keep this around and see if it becomes stronger with age - what I can smell is intriguing and unexpected, but extremely light.

[cupide430]

Lurid

*Swoon* Sweet, sweet berry with a teensy hint of herbal to keep it from being cloying. This has a very much sex kitten cotton candy vibe on me. No lavender, no ozone. Some white musk and lots of delicious berry. Often I get the currant = cat pee, but not here! YAY! Oh this is the fruity scent for me. It actually reminds me a lot of Philosophy's Falling in Love (it took me HOURS to figure this out!). There's something about this that is just so incredibly sexy. I'm not exactly sure it is work appropriate due to its sexy nature (and this is the first thing I've worn to work where I've said that... then again I almost never wear any of the sexier sounding perfumes... but I digress). Big bottle here we come. I'm going to slather this one like there's no tomorrow. Yum!

[grrrlennyl]

at first: reading the description, i'm not sure why i ordered this. i smell the lavender, musk, and ozone, but i'm not sure what else.

on: citrussy and light. i think i'm mostly getting the ozone. luckily, it isn't the punch-you-in-the-face kind of ozone that i tend to have a problem with.

half an hour later: i keep smelling soap, but with some sort of berry (must be the currants).

1.5 hours later: a bit berry-ish with some must, but mostly soapy.

overall: i just didn't get along with this one.

[UltraViolet]

 

In the bottle

As someone perfectly described earlier "cotton candy sex".

 

On

Different on, but still sexy and darkly fruity. It has more than average throw too.

 

30 minutes

At this stage the ozone and musk are more prominent with the currant being less strong than it was 10 minutes ago. Reminds me of "Storm" or "Lightning" meets "Lady MacBeth" or "The Red Queen".

 

Throw:

More than average

 

Scent category:

Fruity/ozone/animalistic

 

Summary

The combination of the fruit and the musk is what makes "Lurid" to my liking. It reminds me of Lush's nuclear pink colored bubble bar "It's a Date" or their "Sugar Plum" ballistic a little bit.

I don't smell the lavender a whole lot in "Lurid". I've tried Beth's single note Bulgarian lavender and I can smell it but it's not the overriding scent, on me anyway.

This is right up there with Beths' other berryish, red and black currant blends such as "Lady MacBeth, "The Red Queen" and "Gomorrah". "Lurid" isn't as sweet of a currant scent as "Bordello", "Jester" or "Swank" however.

It also smells similar to "King of Spades" or even "King of Clubs" a little bit.

Lurid smells like one of the above blends mixed with "Storm" or "Lightning".

 

Purchase again?

Most definitely.

 

1-5 rating (5 being best)

4.5

Edited November 11, 2005 by UltraViolet

[astrid]

I was so interested by the description of Lurid, that I *had* to order it and in a 5ml. It arrived today.

 

In the bottle, quite ozone-y! But! Once on, it is so gentle and beautiful! This might be lurid if you spilled the whole bottle on you, but why do that?! It started out as a gentle scent, then the sweetness of the current came out, now it has settled to a very soft sweetness with a hint of lavender and white musk. Really, really lovely! I am so glad I got this one!!!

Edited November 13, 2005 by astrid

[wickedgoddess]

Wet - initially this smells a little perfumey, not in a good way. I fear it's the lavender, even though I generally like lavender. I can detect the ozone too.

Dry - lavender and white musk. On me, this is a nicer version of some of the masculine fougere perfumes, but underneath it all, there is a touch of dryer sheety perfuminess. Nice, but ultimately not for me.

 

On the wickedgoddess scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being best, this rates a 2.

[zenvodunista]

is it the black currant that lends this scent it's Sweet-Tart candy edge? Good to know I amp that sucker up. Too bad because this started off as rather mysterious, and hard to pin down, though I wanted to sniff more. It's ending up as Sweet Tarts and that's not what i'm going for.

 

i'd say, if your skin is not one that amps berry, you should give this a try. it's really intriguing in the bottle -- i can't really tell what's what, but it's extremely alluring and i just want to keep sniffing it to figure it out.

 

if you amp berry, well. you know!

 

n.

[Splendid Molerat]

I get a couple of competing scent-memories from Lurid.

 

First the silly one: Anyone remember Thrills gum? That bright-mauve, clove-y Chicklets competitor? Man, I loved those.

 

Better memory: Long soak in the tub, all kinds of fragrant bubbles and scrubs, and the next half-hour out of the tub you've got a cloud of perfumed steam wafting off your skin? It's a lot like that.

 

It's giving me a craving for those Angel bath flakes, in a roundabout way.

[WaltzforZizi]

This is my first review, so please be gentle.

 

I got Lurid as a free imp in my last order and I am so glad I did.

This is such a beautiful oil. This is my first oil with black currant so I was kinda surprised it smells of sweet oranges on my skin when I first applied. It must be my skin chemistry. After it dried a bit the orange smell changed into what I believe the black currant is supposed to smell like, which is a very full bodied sweetness. The musk and resin hang around in the background giving the oil a little more depth and balance, it's almost a bit spicy. I'm not smelling much lavender at all but it might just be pushed into the back ground as well. Really, I think this is stunning. I think this might just be going on my 5ml list.

[sophia_helix]

In the bottle:

 

Kind of fruity, but not sweet.

 

Wet:

 

SOAP. With blackcurrant. Oh, ugh, this is turning my stomach...

 

Drydown:

 

The reviews on this were so good that I grimly perservered through drydown with this oil, even though it was really making me sick to my stomach. The blackcurrant was soapy and medicinal, and the ozone/musk/lavender combination just dragged it down in a stuffy antique store way. Overall, this really made me think of something trying to be sweet that isn't really, like that awful bite of medicine through the sweet flavoring of cough syrup.

 

It also reminded me a lot of Nyarlathotep, another scent I didn't like, probably because of the salty ozone. I like almost all the ingredients of this blend separately, but in combination...blech. One of the few oils I've hated.

[byrdie]

Note ~ An imp from my Halloweenie Lab order.

 

TMI ~ Aunt Flow is starting to call other relatives to make sure that they clean for her arrival.

 

Vial ~ Storebought cologne, somewhat sweet.

 

Wet ~ ugh. I can smell the fumes rising off of my skin. It's like something off my parents' dressing table.

 

Drying ~ I assume that the base is red musk and spice, and the top layer is sweet flowers. It's turning lighter and more powdery as it dries.

 

Drydown ~ The ingredients have all recombined into a powdery sweetness layered over an ... economical cologne.

 

Dry ~ oofah. The same, but with a slight vinegar-ish twinge to it. It's an odd, nosey, round odor that's been added to the overall scent.

 

Fade ~ The vinegar seems to have run off, leaving the same sweet-over-cheap cologne scent I had before.

 

Final thoughts ~ For people who wish to mix commonly available perfumes and colognes into lotions and bath products, this could be an oil to experiment with.

 

5ml ~ It's not my thing, no.

[Blood onmy hands]

After reading everyone else's reviews, I am quite depressed that Lurid isn't working out so well on me. On me, this smells like the bathroom of a busy household after everyone has gotten ready for school or work in the morning. Baby powder, shaving cream, soap, and hairspray

 

I'm not getting any fruitiness, this just gets a bit soapier in the drydown.

 

After an hour, still light soaps and powders. This one isn't working for me at all. I'll be swapping my imp.

[Thaleia]

Frimp me, Lab! Thank you. This was on my wish list.

 

In the vial: Something sharp, like lavender and musk. It could've also been the 'voltaic charge of ozone' because it did wake me up. It reminds me of a womanly perfume I've smelt in the past, but I can't really place it right now.

 

Wet: Powdery lavender and aquatic notes. It's a cool fragrance, very fresh, a light purple in colour.

 

Drydown: I'm not the only one getting the soap, am I? But it's the good kind of soap, the fresh-scented kind that makes me smile. This soap is a wild-berry scented soap that's kind of neat, but then the berry fades away and I'm left with ...

 

Dry: Soap. A fresh-from-the-shower smell. And ... it's gone. In ten minutes.

 

Because of the soap factor, this is going further down on my wish list (I've got it set up in order of what I want to get first, not by BPAL's categories) but I'm not ruling it out entirely. This would go really well in lotion, I think. My mom, who enjoys light floral/fresh scents, might like this. It might even work better on her than it does on me.

 

ETA, 12/19: I'm wearing it right now, by itself, without any other oils to distract me, and I really like this. It's aquatic, floral, and ... piney. I'm not sure it's meant to smell like that - maybe it's the lavender that's giving the scent the sharpness that I'm mistaking for evergreen - but whatever it is, it's a lovely scent, great for winter (or anytime, really). Nice and soft, very comforting.

 

My mom's getting another imp, and I'm keeping this one, and it's moving back up to where it was on my wish list.

 

ETA, 1/11/06: I'm ridiculously in love with this. I brought it on my trip to visit my extended family and I now need a 5ml. My imp is goooone.

 

Rating: 3.25 4 4.5

Edited January 12, 2006 by rabid hauteur

[Imbrium]

Man, I cannot pin this one down.

 

It's warm, slightly spicy, and it's cold and clean - with no hint of soap. And, it's very well blended, on my skin - no one note really jumps out at me.

 

As this dries, it gets slightly darker, and a bit fruitier, but still not to the point where I would categorize this as a "fruity" scent; not at all. Instead, I can smell the influence of certain scents - I can tell that there's white musk present, somewhere - but nothing really screams for attention, which I find interesting, given the way musks often seem to stand out on my skin.

 

Overall, I like this. I've never smelled anything else like this, and I'm intrigued.

[Northernminx]

Complex - one of the more difficult to pick apart scents from the lab I've tried in a while. There's a definite undercurrent of black currant but this is predominantly lavendar on me with a touch of ozone. This is much cooler than I'd anticipate and while interesting and fun to try not something I'd wear a lot. Ah well.

[walkingundine]

The ozone note made me nervous, but in the end it's all good. Lurid is a bizarre mix of really calming and oddly energizing. The other berry/currant scents I like are all 'Get out there and kick some @$$' scents. I found Lurid to be more 'Get out there and kick some @$$ after you have a nice nap and foment some evil evil plans'. It smells more... Purple than the other berry/currant scents.

[blu°]

Lurid

 

I think I might have some bad nose days these days.

 

Just wanted to state that first.

 

To me Lurid is strangely similar to Bewitched considering the quality of the berry scent in both of the oils. It's weird, as even the berry notes in Bewitched seem to be different to those in Lurid, but somehow I perceive them both as subdued and rather low pitched as compared to other, brighter berry scents. Connected with that goes a common dark purple-violet colour in my mind.

 

So much.

 

Other than that, Lurid has a mory airy, wild . The lavender, ozone and white musk combine for a feeling of clean and wild, but the scent is not ozoney-fresh or harsh or overwhelmingly musky.

I suppose the resins are somewhere down with the berries, keeping their sweet to the ground and anchoring the whole scent. I can't really smell them, though.

 

Someone mentioned amber or patchouli, and while I'm not in the position to differentiate any resins in here myself, I'd say that they are not molassey resins, rather light textured and smooth.

 

Back to my colour associations. The berries here are a little fainter than those in Bewitched, so their colour is fainter, of course, but also has some more red pigments. Like a faded red.

 

The lavender seems to add some muted green note.

 

Like a storm over a wet meadow, slate grey dynamic sky. Underneath the grass some wild berries, but the meadow itself dancing with the storm.

 

It’s nice. I don’t usually like ozone-y perfumes, but Lurid is a winner. Probably because I like berries and the light musk and lavender in this and the ozone is an atypical, soft one. Or there’s just very little of it inside.

 

However, the scent is very light, I hardly ever get a whiff of it and I have to pull my wrist close to merely catch a tiny hint of a trace of berries and something slightly musty, which isn’t unpleasant to smell, just very faint.

 

I think I’ll keep the imp and see if Lurid grows on me with time or change of season, and whether it ever gets a chance to rival Bewitched in my bottle collection.

[Mary Mayhem]

In bottle: spicey sweet

 

On Wet: A little fruit coming through, I get a little bit of the aquatic as it's drying down. Mmm, this is pretty and sweet, not at all horrific. I don't get ozone, thank goodness, as ozone usually icks on me. There's an element of candy in it, but not sickly. I think I may be a currant fan!

 

Oh, this is pretty and a bit sexy too! I like it! This would be a great bath bomb scent, I think. (:

 

A re-buy!

[Diana]

I am in total love. I ordered an imp of this because I was insanely curious, but didn't want to dive into a 5mL. Ozone notes tend to go really bad air-freshener on me.

 

In the vial: It's sharp. Almost minty.

 

Wet: This must be the Bulgarian lavender. I must say that judging from this, it is greener and more herbal than traditional French of English lavender. It smells almost like an evergreen with a slightly menthol note to it. There's a quick spike of something sweet in the background.

 

Dry: The lavender softens, and the black currant becomes a sweet, almost candy-like base note. There is a soft musk to it that blends perfectly with the lavender. If there is any ozone or resin note here, it is really faint and well-blended. Hooray!

 

I really like it. It's like Antique Lace having an orgy with Lolita or Jailbait. Candy sweet, but not overpoweringly so, layered under a soft, skin-like musk. This is definitely going to warrant a 5mL.