dead of night 
Strangelove NYC (2014)

Those with no experience of real oud oils might need a minute here to gird their loins, because this right here is the real stuff. None of the cheesy, soupy barnyard funk of real oud has been toned down or mitigated, so the initial onslaught is truly animalic.

But give it time to settle and the scent soon reveals a butter-soft rendition of leather that will have you crooning. What I appreciate in this fragrance is that it manages to be both dark and fresh at the same time, the watery greenness of violet leaf lifting the oud out of its brown gloom, aerating it a little, polishing it up for polite company.

There's a smidge of rose and amber to soften the impact of the oud, but in general, this is not a sweet or floral fragrance. It employs an almost single-minded focus on exploring and bringing out the complexities of the oud, particularly its green, suede, and soft leather facets. Like all of the Strangelove NYC fragrances, it is linear, focusing on a simple exposition of top notch raw materials. I said once in a review of Tabac Aurea by Sonoma Scent Studio that the total effect was “as if the perfumer held a dried tobacco leaf up against the sunlight, slowly turned it around in her hands, and captured each of its changing colors and smells in one small bottle”, and that's how I feel the materials have been treated here, for Strangelove NYC.

Here we go again...another addition to the multitude of rose and oud fragrances...thick and rich , going for that luxury profile...the oud gives me a whiff of barnyard here and there...As it dries down it actually feels drier to me than the opulent beginning phases...finishes as a fairly decent woody amber...might have considered this if there weren't so many other good options in this category...

While there are some fine ingredients at work in this fragrance, the composition is somewhat redundant. Upfront, it's a rose-driven oud over slightly animalic / slightly dry musks with some ambery woods and spices thrown in. The oud's fecal–somewhat cheesy upfront à la Syoofi, and it becomes more barnyard as it settles. The rose smells like a doctored otto, but the bitterness of the stem is backgrounded with the main emphasis placed on the sweeter headspace of the petals–an effect created through the inclusion of other floral notes. The musks serve to sustain what quickly becomes a purr of a skin scent; low projection but with fascinating sillage. Upfront, it's bombastic to the point of being mawkish, and it sort of latches onto that whole Roja Dove / Clive Christian / Xerjoff aesthetic of “luxury" that border on tackiness.

After thirty minutes of so, when things tame down a little, I think this is the point where it shines the most. It becomes a slightly musky, slightly raspy wooden amber–quite warm and poised, and nowhere near as over the top as the opening. It rings of some of Laudamiel's older compositions (there's a hint of Amber Absolute in here, for example), and there's a scratchy dryness that's unexpected from such rich ingredients. It's probably at this point where Dead of Night gets as close as it's going to get to its ad copy as it's quite intimate and heat reactive. By this point, the oud and the rose have already stepped offstage, and what you're left with is suspiciously close to an ambroxan / maltol cocktail.

The scent is a thick, dense affair that throws everything at you at once and then runs away and hides. Its high points are that it wears dynamically, has enough depth and form to keep you intrigued, and the materials are undeniably top-shelf. Given that it's Laudamiel, it's well polished; no rough edges and no visible cracks. Yet we've just seen this kind of thing far too many times now. I'd assume that it's aimed at people who aren't as well versed in the oud-wave, and are perhaps unaware of other comparable scents that can be had for a fraction of the price with comparable materials. Either that, or its for the client who'll drop $500 on a bottle simply to have a solid, nice quality, but ultimately MOR amber-oud in their collection. It's fine and “nice,” but completely unoriginal and obscenely overpriced. If you've been around the oud block a few times and have tried some of the real deal stuff, then you'll probably find this to be skippable.