Bruno favours simplicity and clarity in Vetiverissimo, and there’s no mistaking that this is a vetiver fragrance. It is fine-tuned to perfection, a study of the natural material which wildly ranges from smoky to clean, citrusy and earthy. Here it is unfalteringly suave, a deliberate tessellation of sweet, woody, smoky, earthy, vegetal, and citric profiles that unfurl like a pattern. Here Bruno is the maestro of this vetiver symphony, ensuring all parts are playing in tune, and at the correct volume. Similar aesthetic effect is found in Monserrat, exploding what is possible of the citrus category. The musical metaphor is swapped for the visual, as Bruno paints fresco in scent, sharing its vibrancy and brilliance, tactility and textural depth, and harmony. Brilliant bitterness begins by way of grapefruit, its sharp edges softened at the immediate touch of profound osmanthus flower, an amazing extract that evokes the best qualities of jasmine flower, apricot, and fine tannin - redolent of tea leaves and even tobacco. This rests on a wet plaster note, this thick and musky fantasy note that surprises just as much as it seems to agree on the nose.
It’s the phantasmal - and the way it encroaches the real and the literal that fascinates Bruno - and how this can be achieved in the art of perfumery. His imagination is at play in Lampblack, which begins in the caverns of memory - it is inspired by the smell of ink, the dark soot that turns into pigment. Iridescent when diluted, Lampblack holds together sheen and smoke, light and shadow. It glistens through smog, it appeals to pleasant memories of the outdoors, exposed to nature. Its aroma is vegetal, mineral, and saline, deepend with notes of wood and roots, moving through the fractures of a hot sun-blasted earth, seasoned with black pepper and inconspicuously lightened with sweet orange and bitter grapefruit. The result is an unusual quality of freshness, trailing with spiciness and weightless smoke – it is reassuring and salubrious.
Feu Secret pivots around a similar theme, exploring the bewitching effect of the burning flame, this time without smoke. Roots are celebrated and the glorious paradox of iris root, it is earthy and sweet, blushing through a cool exterior. An aromatic fire of eucalyptus leaves, pine needles, and pink pepper crackle and sigh their spicy and clean scent. In the background, the air passes through the trees, picking up their verdant scent, tinged with camphor. Turmeric root, reminiscent of parched soil, returns us to the core of this orris flame, softened with the intoxicatingly smoky hue of vanilla. Feu Secret is quiet, velvety, and gentle, but the shape it forms in its trail is unmissable and prominent.
Ummagumma sublimates its smoky effect so to become a frame which supports an exciting gourmand composed of rich tonka bean absolute, labdanum, and cocoa. The result is intoxicating and positively stupefying - a hedonistic work that works a mature and very serious dryness - incense, tobacco, and resins – over dark, unctuous, creamy, spicy, ambery and smoky effects. This fragrance achieves the essential feat of any great gourmand - it is gourmand by accident; an incidental consequence of its notes. Its form is that of serious perfumery, with the generosity we come to expect of this style. Corpse Reviver, in contrast, continues this theme but attains excess. It pushes into extremes: it is decadent and sticky - the perfume draws one in and clings to the wearer. This fragrance is an ode to this sensation, equally celebrating the sticky and delicious pleasures of caramel, melting dark chocolate, salty liquorice, dried fruits, vanilla, amaro and whisky that oozes on the surface of a glass. This is not a sweet fragrance. Corpse Reviver is pure synaesthesia, as textures are captured in smell, contrasted against the sappy and cool aroma of rosemary, the sharp brightness of blood orange, and the furry plush of civet. Corpse Reviver realises the other great feat of a gourmand perfumes: to be at the absolute edge of the inedible.
