Baque  
Slumberhouse (2012)

My friend sold me around 10 mililiters of Baque, additionally I ordered a sample from Luckyscents.

Baque does similar tricks as others from the brand - creates memories in my head, in my brain. In that case however, these memories are not that closely related to my very own memories, which are a part of my childhood, a part of my life.

It opens up with a strong hay note that almost instantly reminded me of Sova. But it’s quite different from Sova, yet similar. It’s almost like Sova and Jeke decided to have a baby. So yes, pretty darn strong organic note is prominent on my skin. It changes into slightly boozy alcoholic note mixed with delicate herbaceous note and a little bit of tobacco - raw and tobacco smoke is also there. However, I must say, that compared with Baque Jeke (tell your pick with the formula, it doesn’t matter in that case) is a super smoky tobacco-cade bomb. The only one that might be considered as boozy as Baque - is a new Jeke 2022. After that there’s not that much going on as the scent keeps drying down to its ambery base.

Longevity is over 9 hours, sillage depends on the sprays used - and I’d say less is more with Baque.

Interesting. I’ll stick to my decant and samples, and see how much more it can surprise me (I believe it can, a lot).

A perfect autumn fragrance and one of my favorites from the line, highlighting a powerful blend of dried apricots, pipe tobacco, and bourbon whiskey, lain atop fall spices and fields of cut hay. It pulls together the best elements from each of Lobb's other tobacco fragrances, creating a perfectly balanced middle ground. This is the type of scent that makes me look forward to the darker, colder months at the tail-end of autumn, as winter fast approaches.

Baque opens with a blast of dark rum and coconut, but it's about to question your olfactory senses. The very brief opening of what appears to be a gourmand boozy type of fragrance, now become herbal, fruity, tobacco. It's a really hard to describe one in that stage.. it takes a few moment before the tobacco takes center stage. The herbal note would make you think it has a ton of basil or even oregano in it. I wanna say I smell some apricot, but it's probably not an oil, rather, an accord one must make, and replicating it seems impossible. I get a fuzzy skinned fruit kind of smell, but apricot, maybe not.

This fragrance will send your olfactory senses through twists and turns on a wild ride, and that's just in the opening. The middle settles more into a tobacco-centric frag, and the base gets a little boring with cedar and vanilla. Though we know, there are no base notes that have note already been done somewhere else, there are only some notes that can carry into the base, and vanilla and woods are definitely two. Thanks to the creator for not boring us with tonka and Iso E, or boring amber. I feel this one could have easily has an amber heavy base and still been good, but the combo of vanilla and cedar was a good choice, giving us something a little fresh, a little less utilized in perfumery.

Bravo, Slumberhouse. Although I am not a die hard fan of this house, I certainly respect and appreciate what the creator has done, something we don't see too often. I find the prices a bit too high for my personal taste, already having a huge collection, I wouldn't wear his fragrances often. Although I feel everyone on this website and reading needs to smell what this man can do. If these sold more at the Tauer price point ($100-$110 or so) a bottle, this house would be at stores everywhere, imho.

Genre: Woody Oriental

A sweet dried fruit and tobacco composition in what I consider to be the typical, dense, viscous Slumberhouse style. Not necessarily the most nuanced or distinctive scent in Josh Lobb's current lineup (those would be New Sibet and Norne, respectively), but appealing enough, especially on a cold, damp Pacific Northwest winter night.

This is another one in the oriental style that I associate with Opium Pour Homme edp. This smells like a great take on it. It has the feel of what I would expect, or hope for, from an independent, or niche, perfume company: a rich, complex, small-batch-production feel, more natural smelling than a mass-market fragrance.

The base isn't a problem, necessarily, but it becomes simplistically one-dimensional sweetness - benzoin, it smells like to me.

I was glad to obtain Baque via blind buy after it was reintroduced in 2017 and while it's not up to the very high level of most the house's perfumes, it's still strong and leaves an impression.

I echo the reviewer who likened it to stewed fruits, as I repeatedly turn to this analogy. Genre-wise, it's boozy and woody more so than fruity, though, and while I get hints of tobacco leaf, it feels wholly dominated by the apricot and vanilla that render the final product so sweet.
It's slightly creamy and spicy as well but these are lesser descriptors.

Baque's longevity is still excellent like most Slumberhouse fragrances but its projection is certainly slightly lower than most of the house's other offerings.

Certainly this is one I'd recommend fans of Slumberhouse trying as there's a thread in it that connects it Josh's other creations, but for those new to the house, it does not represent its best, in my opinion. Still, a bottle I'm happy to hang onto and occasionally use.

7 out of 10