LAVS 
Unum (2013)

If this was a tune, it'd be the part of a Mariah Carey song where she shatters glass.

It's beautiful, crystalline, and absolutely sinus clearing. You don't have to guess if you'll enjoy this - if you think Avignon and Bois d'Encens are far too tame, this is a no brainer.

For the rest of us - proceed with caution, and patience.

A far-reaching, diffusive aldehydic incense, Unum Lavs, is almost cabalistic in feel, at once familiar and alien, a portrayal of ego annihilation through scent. Where do I end and the scent begins? When wearing it this morning, I think of how my attachments run deep and holy, and Lavs is making me question them. What are we holding on to? A sense of longing? Hope?

Or is it hopelessness that we lean into, through the incense smoke, surrounded by an unadorned quarter, to draw attention to what lies between the thoughts and the desires. There is a spare, solemn cloud that opens me up to the reality of impermanence. There are ashes, that is the reality of life. There will be ashes. Lavs captures the beauty of something that may seem so morose and hard to embrace and makes it just a bit easier, perhaps, to confront.

Even the conifers will lose their needles one day, we smell them as they are today, still alive, but the ashes waft through. The trees that give us aromatic resins, one day they will fade, like all living beings will. We hold them dear today, we hold them in stillness, we honor them, we honor the here and now, moment by moment. This fulsome harvest is not everlasting, relish it today.

Dark, smoky incense concocted from resins and spices over moss and rosewood. Everyone pegs it as frankincense, despite frankincense/olibanum being absent from Unum's published pyramid. The foreboding opening soon gives way to a more traditional “high church” incense, smooth and airy rather than scratchy or nostril-searing. Growing ever lighter and cleaner in tone as it dries down, LAVS gives the impression of a shadow continually lifting.

I'm by no means Catholic, but I could see slinking into a basilica to nab some of this stuff. Strictly for fans of the style, who are unlikely to be disappointed.

This scent makes me physically uncomfortable. The scene it sets is unpleasant, at best. I feel like I am chin deep in cold, murky water at the bottom of a well, waiting to die alone. This is what Buffalo Bill's basement smelled like in Silence of the Lambs.

Any scent that can evoke such repulsion is an A+ in my book!

Incense fragrances are some of my very favorite. LAVS is a great one. I'd love to get a bottle some day. It's darker than many incense frags on the market, but it's rich and excellent. I have other favorite incense fragrances, and LAVS would be a great one to have in rotation. It is on the dark and cold side of things, but the olibanum note is strong and true...love it!