Smell and sound are intimately tied to memory, and to each other: fragrances have "notes" and scentmakers work at perfume organs. A great perfume is like music you love: not something you know, but something you feel -- and we all feel a little differently. Scent + Song is about exploring those connections, exploring the unconscious through the art that speaks to us, as well as bringing the good taste of the coolest people I know to a slightly wider audience. To start: myself.
I wore Nudiflorum all summer but I fell in love with it before, in the winter. It might have been the cold. The amyl salicyclate note preserved sickly sweet, raspberry candy, Valentine’s Day. Yung Kayo had just dropped, album like the cold chrome future under the sea in old SpongeBob episodes. But there was something viciously human beneath the glitchy beats, or perhaps more primal than that.
I’m reminded now of the Digimon WereGarurumon, a bright blue wolf sporting brass knuckles and rockstar denim, cartoonishly dangerous, too cool to be real. Nudiflorum has that too, the animalic notes that stick heavy in your clothing for weeks to come. The overall effect is heady, noxious verging on intoxicating.
I was greatly amused to discover, 6 months after my sampling and 2 months after my purchasing, that Nudiflorum has a top note of rhubarb, a scent I had been unable to shake since eating a surreally delicious sorbet in the spring. Base notes of leather and wood help to ground the fruit and tie things together.
A scent I love to sweat in, as if catalyzed by heat and sunlight. It’s great for raves, a close aura that won’t fade over a sticky summer night. It’s not one for wallflowers; a scent this loud demands an intensity of disposition, even if you only put it on for the night.
“Everything New” is tied around a metronomic harp, reminiscent of Gunna’s “Who You Foolin.” Instead of aiming for hypnosis, “Everything New” explodes in digital pyrotechnics, a riot of screaming synths and pulverizing 808s, a medieval castle sutured to a space station. Yung Kayo is at the center of it all, floating unflappable. That’s how I feel leaving the bar for a party, one good jacket between me and the windchill, unfazed by the snow, smelling like a million raspberries and a wild animal that will never be tamed.