03/15/2021
Elysium
852 Reviews
Elysium
3
Intoxicating With Purity
When I think of the noun Oxygen, I can’t help but think of a generation of electronic music producers who contributed to the birth of the dance music industry in the mid-1970s and many of the genres and styles we know and love today. Jean Michel Jarre is an absolute legend and a pioneer, and Oxygene is one of his best-known works of him, with part 4 as my favorite. And Oxygen [⁸O] takes me to my teens when that electric sounds oozed from the radio.
Mister Lie interpreted oxygen in its super-cooled liquid form. He blended many of the sharpest ingredients within perfumery to create that chilliness, stating that Oxygen [⁸O] represents for him a wood scent immersed in liquid oxygen, a warm and cold scent. The mixture of aldehydes, earthy, and musky accords can be too cool for many. Indeed, I find it a compelling creation. Steamy and refreshing, more complex than oxygen itself, it’s a scent you cannot catch, neither capture, but that is in the air, all around you.
Oxygen [⁸O] comes to life with a sizeable amount of aldehydes combined with the piquant pepper to lower the temperature. The fragrance explodes just like the notes that come out of the synthesizer when the fourth part of Oxygene begins. It is a cooling, almost chilly opening, and it makes me think of a frozen bottle just removed from the freezer, that opaque patina fades and droplets of water form on the glass. Although not present in the notes, I get a powder and talc accent typical of the alpha-isomethyl ionone, used to create the smell of iris and violet. Maybe it’s just my impression, or it’s that dryness because of cedarwood with its shades of pencil shavings. Yes, the more time passes, the more I recognize that characteristic smell. Just the smell of freshly flatted and varnished wood in a lumbermill, the shavings scattered on the ground, and the brush still soaked in painting. This opening, with its coolness, will put some off, but I found it very pleasant and intriguing.
The development feels vivacious, as if it is almost evaporating from the skin as liquid oxygen would. The heart of Oxygen [⁸O] turns out a tad leathery and smoky, with precious saffron and austerest olibanum that supply a suede-like accord. It also reminds me of a new sneaker’s shop, where you can appreciate the smell of leather mixed with the soles' fresh rubber, perhaps combined with a fresh coat of paint. I also sense a touch of something mineral and humid around for a while, but it is a fleeting sensation as the juice gets warmer and silkier over evolution.
And then comes the dry-down, with a severely sharpened vetiver, barely resinous, intertwined with cedar and guaiac woods. I seem to get faint of dirty patchouli before closing on a very synthetic white musk. Close to the skin, it is clean, crisp, and opaque, milky, rough, with something petrol-like in it, which makes it less abstract and more natural, with waxy and incensed undertones. To my nose, Virginia Cedar's pencil shavings cedar smell dominates the entire lifetime, as in Comme des Garcons's Wonderwood or LeLabo Santal 33.
This is what Oxygen [⁸O] smells like to me. It’s strange, but not unpleasant. Like all the other nu_be fragrances that I have already reviewed, this one has longevity and a sillage in the norm, I would say moderate. A daily scent for the sparkling Spring months, it’s acceptable for the office when you want to wear a fragrance but want to be discreet about it.
This review is based upon a 100ml bottle I own since March 2021 (27Y901 batch code), which I ordered here www.parfimo.it and paid €19.50.
-Elysium
Mister Lie interpreted oxygen in its super-cooled liquid form. He blended many of the sharpest ingredients within perfumery to create that chilliness, stating that Oxygen [⁸O] represents for him a wood scent immersed in liquid oxygen, a warm and cold scent. The mixture of aldehydes, earthy, and musky accords can be too cool for many. Indeed, I find it a compelling creation. Steamy and refreshing, more complex than oxygen itself, it’s a scent you cannot catch, neither capture, but that is in the air, all around you.
Oxygen [⁸O] comes to life with a sizeable amount of aldehydes combined with the piquant pepper to lower the temperature. The fragrance explodes just like the notes that come out of the synthesizer when the fourth part of Oxygene begins. It is a cooling, almost chilly opening, and it makes me think of a frozen bottle just removed from the freezer, that opaque patina fades and droplets of water form on the glass. Although not present in the notes, I get a powder and talc accent typical of the alpha-isomethyl ionone, used to create the smell of iris and violet. Maybe it’s just my impression, or it’s that dryness because of cedarwood with its shades of pencil shavings. Yes, the more time passes, the more I recognize that characteristic smell. Just the smell of freshly flatted and varnished wood in a lumbermill, the shavings scattered on the ground, and the brush still soaked in painting. This opening, with its coolness, will put some off, but I found it very pleasant and intriguing.
The development feels vivacious, as if it is almost evaporating from the skin as liquid oxygen would. The heart of Oxygen [⁸O] turns out a tad leathery and smoky, with precious saffron and austerest olibanum that supply a suede-like accord. It also reminds me of a new sneaker’s shop, where you can appreciate the smell of leather mixed with the soles' fresh rubber, perhaps combined with a fresh coat of paint. I also sense a touch of something mineral and humid around for a while, but it is a fleeting sensation as the juice gets warmer and silkier over evolution.
And then comes the dry-down, with a severely sharpened vetiver, barely resinous, intertwined with cedar and guaiac woods. I seem to get faint of dirty patchouli before closing on a very synthetic white musk. Close to the skin, it is clean, crisp, and opaque, milky, rough, with something petrol-like in it, which makes it less abstract and more natural, with waxy and incensed undertones. To my nose, Virginia Cedar's pencil shavings cedar smell dominates the entire lifetime, as in Comme des Garcons's Wonderwood or LeLabo Santal 33.
This is what Oxygen [⁸O] smells like to me. It’s strange, but not unpleasant. Like all the other nu_be fragrances that I have already reviewed, this one has longevity and a sillage in the norm, I would say moderate. A daily scent for the sparkling Spring months, it’s acceptable for the office when you want to wear a fragrance but want to be discreet about it.
This review is based upon a 100ml bottle I own since March 2021 (27Y901 batch code), which I ordered here www.parfimo.it and paid €19.50.
-Elysium