The Creature is alive...

I have tried the two recent Kerosene releases and I am happy to say that Kerosene is not a one hit artist.

Copper Skies is an in-your-face amber scent and as such I am not the most suitable person to talk about, amber is not my favourite note. Copper skies opens with a dirty amber note and honey. The dirty feeling subsides slowly leaving a thick, sweet amber. The reported basil note exists but is not evident by itself. It just adds a needed high pitched note to the low key humming of amber and honey. Copper Skies will definitely please hard core amber lovers.

Notes from Kerosene: basil, coffee, sweet tobacco leaves, cloves, honeycomb, cedar, amber

Notes from my nose: amber, labdanum, honey, incense 

The Creature is truly alive! Off it goes with a strong mint opening with an added hint of camphor, just enough to keep it from smelling too toothpaste-y. Just when I think that this is just going to be a fresh cologne in comes an almost dusty, cold and detached note of bamboo. This probably comes from the combination of the official notes of green tea and sweet birch. The opening is extremely impressive. Even more unique than that of R’oud Elements. Pushing the sprayer of this is like rubbing the lamp and letting the genie loose. You have the mint jumping and grabbing you by the nose, you have the bamboo note pulling you to the ground with a milky, sappy smell. It feels very natural, alive in an unembellished way. Without actually having a noticeable fig note it makes me think of a fig tree with all the different aspects of the fig note it can offer: the green of the leaves, the smell of the milk oozing from the twigs, the dry smell of the fig tree wood. There is no sweetness in this one. At this stage Creature brings me to mind the myth of the Dryads, the nymphs living inside trees. I have a vision of a tree cracking open and a creature jumping out of the tree trunk. Initially I get all the milky smells of the wood torn open, the slightly ghostly smell of mint and this is alarming. But then I actually see the Nymph. The drydown is pure green heaven! Everything quiets down and clicks into place. The most heavenly unisex green scent I have smelled in years. I will go out on a limb here and trust the deepest hard-wirings of my mind: I do not have an active memory of how Jacomo Silences smells although I have smelled it many years ago but catching the deep drydown of Creature after about four hours made Silences wake up in my mind. I will have to search for a bottle to verify my memory but I can also tell you that a bottle of Creature is in my immediate shopping plans. Creature has the same insane development as R’oud Elements and slowly morphs into a perfectly balanced green scent that feels equally comfortable on a man’s or on a woman’s skin. All the notes form a perfect solved puzzle where everything has its place, nothing sticking out. Sheer elegance.

Notes from Kerosene: sweet birch, lemon, mint, green tea, jasmine, sage, violet leaves, cypress, moss, patchouli, cedar

Notes from my nose: mint, camphor, bamboo, galbanum, jasmine, moss

 Over the weekend I was learning two songs to play as part of Copper Skies (see www.CopperSkies.us,  or Copper Skies on Facebook and Twitter): “Hey Soul Sister” by Train and Matt Nathanson’s “Come On Get Higher”.  I kept playing the songs over and over again in my car.  Of course my children were with me often and they learned the words of the songs too! 

They were singing THEIR HEARTS OUT!  It made me tear up to listen to their little voices singing the chorus of  Hey Soul Sister, “Hey  Heyyyyy, heyyyy, heyyyy”.  They sang with such passion:  loud, clear and beautiful. 

We should do the same with all we do in life.