Unquiet
Things

Arcana Wildcraft Oxomoco is (to my nose, anyway!) the scent of Leonora Carrington’s shadowy, enigmatic “The Feast of Samhain” distilled into fragrance—a realm where darkness consumes light, where fathomless frankincense overwhelms a pale, luminous core with primal intensity. Smoke spirals and weaves through soft coconut milk, creating a landscape of raw, mystical contrasts: hand-captured frankincense emerges not as a delicate whisper but as a profound presence, its tendrils curling against the saline, creaminess like umbral fingers of smoke tracing a tenebrous shroud. Threaded throughout, cedar and amber drift like ghostly mediators—subtle conductors that amplify the tension between the scent’s disparate elements, lending depth to its complex intricacy The coconut milk lurks like a secret silver thread, barely visible beneath the deep, consuming woodiness—both elements distinct, stubborn, refusing to blend yet creating a complex, unresolvable presence, elemental and strange and unutterably glorious.

Heretic Parfum Coeur Noir The first breath of Coeur Noir defies its brooding presentation with an unexpected lightness – a cool pastel candied dust, compressed powder sweetness, like fruit wisps and sugared flower petals ground with chalk. This is anchored by a woody, resinous vanilla, but rather than cream or confection, it calls to mind a delicate, aromatic booklet of papiers d’Armenie. The lightness is deceptive, though. As it settles on skin, the sweetness begins its slow retreat, like an eclipse gradually dimming the sky. What emerges is more contemplative – a dusky, myrrh-like quality, that smoky-sour-shivery incense that suggests the shadows promised by that black heart-shaped box, a liminal space of perpetual twilight chill, never reaching full dark.

Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab Poppies and Lupine may not be intended as such, and I may be the only one who experiences it thusly, but it feels like a phantom companion to their long-discontinued but much beloved (by me, anyway) Danube. I know it’s a bit lazy to describe a fragrance in terms of another fragrance, but for context, here is what I wrote about Danube many many years ago:

Danube is a beloved scent that is, for me, more about memory than the actual fragrance itself. It is a deep blue aquatic scent – but not salty, ozone-y, beachy aquatic, nor is it murky, swampy aquatic. Like a cold swimming pool on a hot day (maybe if you were adding grapefruit to your pool instead of chlorine) with every blue flower imaginable floating on top of it. Imagine being 6 years old and holding your breath and submerging yourself in a swimming pool, then slo-o-o-wly sinking to the bottom. The water is chilled, you feel like the only person in the world and everything is totally silent. Imagine peering up and seeing the sun streaming down into the water, between all of the blue petals. It’s calm and soothing and serene and is an absolutely a must for hot, sticky weather and for people who haven’t got a swimming pool.

Where Danube carries you into that crystalline submersion, that childhood moment of perfect underwater suspension, Poppies and Lupine exists in the languid aftermath. This is what happens after you’ve surfaced, water droplets evaporating from sun-warmed skin, as you lie half-dozing by the pool’s edge while twilight seeps slowly into the world. The fragrance possesses a deeply narcotic quality that immediately brings to mind Milla Jovovich singing “In a Glade” – that haunting Ukrainian folk melody that seems to exist outside of time, vocals drifting through some ancestral dreamscape. I’ve found myself playing this song on repeat while wearing this scent, each enhancing the otherworldliness of the other, creating a feedback loop of beautiful melancholy.

Imagine moonblooms floating on still waters, their heavy heads nodding in the limpid, liminal space between wakefulness and dreaming, their reflection creating a hypnotic double-image that blurs the line between what’s real and what’s reverie. There’s something dozy-drowsy in its incense-laden whispers, the gentle floral sway of a midnight lullaby. The scent swathes with the unhurried cadence of half-remembered dreams, each note blurring softly into the next as consciousness unspools and drifts. I find myself returning to this scent not for brightness or clarity but for its gentle dissolution of boundaries – those moments when consciousness folds back upon itself and you become both observer and observed, dreamscape and dreamer simultaneously.

Mark Buxton Dreaming with Ghosts is a Patreon exclusive review! You can find it here.

DSH Perfumes Emerald Hyrax There’s a softness here that feels almost geological—the kind of green that exists between moss and stone, in those damp crevices where nothing much happens except the quietest possible growth. The space where a fern’s tiniest root might tentatively unfurl, where moisture pools in the smallest shadow, where time seems to pause and collect itself. Like a small, fuzzy creature curling into an impossibly delicate nest of lichen and loam; like a monk’s pillow woven from the most tender moss, bathed in the hazy, frozen light of quartz; like an agate’s whispers of its time in the earth.

Liis Choux Choux There’s an Icelandic milk biscuit balanced between vanilla wafer and hard tack– it’s called Mjólkurkex, but don’t ask me to pronounce it. It’s got the subtle taste of a treat but the tooth-breaking texture of something shockingly punitive. Imagine someone tried to gussy it up with a sifting of icing sugar on top, a powdery dusting through the delicate whorls and swirls of a doily. But maybe that’s not enough, so they’ve added a few fragile curls of sweet cream butter, sculpted in the shape of spring flowers. But also, what if you maybe just wanted a proper dessert? They’ve served a small slice of the airiest, fluffiest whipped lemon chiffon cake, too. Exactly the sort of thing that would make a Scandinavian minimalist weep with complicated emotions.

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