Essences

Dark Heart of Papua N•O•A•M 2024

See Prices

More

We may earn a commission when you buy from links on our site, including the eBay Partner Network and Amazon.

See Prices

8.7 / 10 24 Ratings

A new and limited perfume by N•O•A•M for women and men, released in 2024. The scent is spicy-earthy. The longevity is above-average. The production was apparently discontinued.
Limited

More

We may earn a commission when you buy from links on our site, including the eBay Partner Network and Amazon.

Main accords

Spicy

Earthy

Resinous

Woody

Smoky

Fragrance Notes

Papua oud

Seychelles patchouli

Smoked wood

Indian jasminum auriculatum absolute

Indian tuberose

Indonesian patchouli absolute

Madagascan patchouli

Malayan oud

Red champaca absolute

Amber absolute

Black ambergris

Castoreum

East Indian oud

Geranium absolute

Hyraceum

Hyraceum absolute

Indian jasmine sambac absolute

Indonesian styrax

Kenyan frankincense

New Guinean patchouli

Somalian myrrh Vervain

Vervain

Black pepper

Cardamom

Carrot seed

Galbanum

Himalaya cedar

Immortelle absolute

Java vetiver

Jonquil absolute Muskrat

Muskrat

Oakmoss

Vanilla tobacco

Coffee absolute

Costus root

Indian bay leaf Khella

Khella

Ratings

Scent

8.724 Ratings

Longevity

8.421 Ratings

Sillage

7.821 Ratings

Bottle

7.720 Ratings

Submitted by Floyd, last update on 05/17/2025.

Interesting Facts

The fragrance was sold as a set with an artisanal soap, that was produced in cooperation with the label Voyage. 20 bottles were made.

The fragrance was part of the collection "Essences".

Smells similar

What the fragrance is similar to

Reviews

4 in-depth fragrance descriptions

04/14/2025

8
Sillage 9
Longevity 9
Scent

Marieposa
50 Reviews

Translated Show original

Marieposa

Top Review 42

Beat darkly, wild heart

Beat darkly, wild heart
Hidden in the bitter green
The camphor mist
Where the shadows of fleshy leaves
Become one with the furry breath
Black soils

Beat darkly, wild heart
In the rhythm of distant drums
By glowing fires
Beyond the lurking eyes
In the undergrowth

Beat darkly, wild heart
Beneath the black silk
Rain-wet blossoms
On my skin

Beat darkly, wild heart
Because it's not the sun
that makes the moon shine
but the darkness

**

The small Swiss manufacturer N.O.A.M. - short for New Oceans And Meridians - has set itself the goal of opening up foreign worlds to us through olfactory means and invites us to leave familiar paths and broaden our horizons with complex, original fragrances made from the highest quality raw materials. In the case of Dark Heart of Papua, this journey leads into the dark green hell of a tropical jungle with a seamlessly blended mixture of hand-picked oud and patchouli varieties.
Hand on heart: I don't know much about oud and always have difficulty distinguishing it from patchouli, depending on its provenance. Dark Heart of Papua seems to have been created to blur this elusive boundary once and for all. After a sparkling green opening with lots of minty camphor, underlined by slightly smoky galbanum, in which I perceive a minimal hint of stalky oud, the fragrance reveals rugged woods that gradually become softer and softer before finally disintegrating into a tart, earthy jungle base that is deeply rooted in vetiver.
Leathery-animalic notes have left their paw prints here, leading onto inky-bitter mossy paths until petals unexpectedly shimmer. Occasionally, fine threads of smoke and tart herbs ripple through the picture and yet, in all its darkness, the fragrance becomes a soft floral whisper.
Dark Heart of Papua strikes a masterful balance between preserving the raw originality of the essences used and the artisanal finesse of an exceptional self-taught talent, creating a maelstrom of every conceivable shade of green and making at least my wild dark heart beat a little faster.

Thank you, dear Svezenkar, for the unexpected fact that I no longer have to sniff an empty vial.

12/12/2024

9
Bottle 8
Sillage 8
Longevity 9
Scent

Mairuwa
28 Reviews

Translated Show original

Mairuwa

Top Review 9

Driving forces of the earth

The fragrances from the small Swiss fragrance manufacturer N.O.A.M. that I have been able to get to know so far are characterized by the fact that they are all very complex compositions in which the individual notes are sometimes surprisingly clear. Although they are often rather dark fragrances, they still have a great lightness and transparency. Floyd characterized this in a review as a pointillist shimmer. And the manufacturer himself, apparently aware of this special quality of his own compositions, repeatedly finds very apt images for this effect - be it late Gothic "millefleurs" tapestries or the "kaleidoscope", which fans out a whole into infinite facets and thus opens up new perspectives of perception.

Here it is not the name. Although the continent is not correct, it immediately makes me think of Joseph Conrad and thus inevitably of "the horror, the horror." Fortunately, the fragrance does not reflect this in any way. No, in this case the more coherent reference can be found in an accompanying text by N.O.A.M. This quotes a passage from Lukas Maisel's "Book of Dreamed Islands", which speaks of the "thunderless flashes of fireflies" against the "dark tangle of the forest". This is a powerful image and conveys the above-mentioned effect just as aptly, perhaps even more poetically than the other metaphors chosen. This forest is tropically dense and heavy and so the scenery of "Heart of Darkness" somehow fits as an image for the basic mood - if one does not perceive the tropical forest as a place of horror, but as a terrain for the discovery of new olfactory impressions.

The backdrop against which the fireflies dance consists of two main components: Patchouli and oud. The former was used in the form of five different raw material components of different origins: in addition to oils from New Guinea, Indonesia and Madagascar, N.O.A.M. also uses exceptional rarities, in this case a vintage maceration from the Seychelles and a home-made absolute from its own garden (!) In addition, there are at least three different oud components of different origin and quality.

In vetiver fragrances, I have found that the combination of different raw materials, each with its own character, increases the complexity of the note in the end product immensely, highlighting the different facets of vetiver and uniting them in a fragrance that gains immense depth as a result. I can only assume that the situation is similar here with patchouli and oud: that the fragrance spectrum of these notes is expanded and complexified by the components of different origins, which complement and at the same time "sharpen" each other. But the special quality of the hand-picked essences is certainly also a decisive factor here. The earthy-fresh and bitter-spicy notes of patchouli complement the oud building blocks with a slightly smoky-tarry component.
And against this backdrop, many a blossom actually flashes out, brighter notes emerge and take center stage. Jasmine, champaca and tuberose might seem heavy, but they are made to shine by the bright, spicy peaks of pepper and cardamom.

The result is a unity that makes me wonder whether the image of the fireflies is really still entirely coherent. Another one comes to mind, or another series of images: Fritz Winter's "Driving Forces of the Earth". Sparkling crystals radiate from the dark heart of Papua's tropical forests, as it were, not reflecting the sunlight, but seeming to glow from within and, with their pulsation, turning the forest itself into a single living being. Great olfactory cinema once again.

As always in the "Essences" series from N.O.A.M., this is a limited edition fragrance that cannot be reproduced because some of the components used were unique. That is the price of high quality: uniqueness and irretrievability. For the first time, N.O.A.M. has a matching "care series" - consisting of a bar of soap. I can't say anything about it, except that it comes from a similarly sophisticated manufacturer as the fragrance itself and should therefore be a very successful addition. However, the justification for this addition to the product range sounds as sober as it is plausible: "Even adventurers need a wash from time to time!"

Once again, I would like to thank BeJot for the sample.

10/06/2024

9
Pricing 7
Bottle 8
Sillage 9
Longevity 10
Scent

BeJot
22 Reviews

Translated Show original

BeJot

Top Review 25

Live report from a trip to Papua

In the 60s and 70s, we were visited from time to time by a missionary who visited old friends on home leave. He told stories from Papua New Guinea, where he lived. We seven children listened, fascinated, irritated, alienated... many questions remained unanswered, stimulating the imagination...
With these thoughts in my head, I looked forward to the scent that could take me, I hoped, to this distant island.
It does!
I'm inside with the first breath. This spicy, dark scent! How I love it! The journey begins. My heart beats wildly with excitement. It gets darker and darker. Green! Incredible green! Dark, colorful, damp green! Primeval forest... It must be like this! The path is barely recognizable. Dense foliage. Tall trees. It smells even more bitter. Dark brown. Only a little light reaches the forest floor with its roots. I feel the soft moss on the trees. Fine dark green threads. The leaves are leathery, smooth. Everything feels good. Now it is completely still. Everything inside me becomes calm. I lean against a tree trunk. I close my eyes. It's as if I'm breathing the whole forest in and out. I need courage. I don't dare to breathe deeply yet. The forest is too big! Light draws my gaze to the sky. I climb up the tree. Clear air surrounds me. I'm sitting at the top. My gaze wanders over the treetops. Green expanse. Now! A deep breath. I soak up this expanse, the forest, the wood of the venerable old trees. I feel carried. At home. Trust. Primal trust. Smiling tears. Slowly, very slowly, I climb back down the trunk. Leave the forest behind me.
What is that? Something new is coming towards me. The unknown. Smoke. I keep walking towards it. It is a settlement. A muddy, dusty gravel path. Leads past ochre-colored huts. Spicy air hangs between the mud huts. I sit down on an old, sun-warmed wooden bench. Laughing children play on the muddy, dusty village square. A soft breeze wafts a foreign scent over. I follow it. Into a bright, friendly garden behind a low stone wall. Small yellow flowers on shrubs that are unfamiliar to me. It smells so good in this garden! Like dry grass and herbs under half-height, gnarled, resinous trees
The ground is dry. I watch a man working in the garden. He notices me. With a smile, he gives me a fragrant flower.
I breathe in the strange scent deeply and close my eyes.
Suddenly I find myself with a large black dog in my arms. My nose is buried in his fur. His warm body and slow breathing give me deep calm and peace.
I must have fallen asleep. My wrist smells green. A calm, dark green.
"Was there something? Can't be. I'm a simple field-forest-meadow scent."
"Oh yes!!! There was something!!! You are a special field, forest and garden scent! Simply a NOAM! That's how it was! It's still like that!"
And it stayed that way for many more hours.
At some point it became even softer, patchouliier and a little sweeter in between.

Two pictures of the falcon can be found in my album.

10/05/2024

8
Bottle 8
Sillage 9
Longevity 9.5
Scent

Floyd
352 Reviews

Translated Show original

Floyd

Top Review 57

The scent of dreamed islands

"It had grown dark without Akeret being able to tell if it had dawned. The dark tangle of the forest was illuminated by the thunderless flashes of fireflies, like weather lights in hundreds of skies." (Lukas Maisel, Book of Dreamed Islands, Rowohlt 2020)
They echoed in herb-green roots, on whose fingers blossoms grew, dripping seduction from silky life. Shadows of beings seemed to flow boundlessly through trees and soil.
**
New Oceans And Meridians (N.O.A.M. Botanical Perfumes) describes itself as an olfactory space-time travel agency. The Swiss label uses only high-quality natural raw materials for its complex compositions. It maintains personal contact with small distilleries, retailers and manufacturers.
For "Essences - Dark Heart of Papua", for example, home-grown patchoulis from India and Java, artisan patchoulis from Papua, Sulawesi and Madagascar and a vintage Seychelles patch that was macerated with castoreum, hyrax and costus for two years were used. Various oud varieties from Papua, Malaysia and the East Indies form the second backbone of the fragrance.
With "Dark Heart of Papua", the wearer buys a ticket to a jungle straight out of Lukas Maisel's "Book of Dreamed Islands", naturally with the author's consent as far as the scent of his words is concerned. While Meisel's protagonist Akeret tries to find the "missing link" between humans and animals, N.O.A.M creates a "missing link" between nature and animals.
In fact, at the beginning there is a diffuse green-yellowish glow of fireflies (bay leaf, cardamom, verbena), like an illuminated mist (incense) in the dark green, humid jungle of Papua, which is depicted in several shades of patchouli and eaglewood. This initially creates a harsh impression of earthy-woody-green-rooty notes behind the fireflies. Gradually, smoky woody notes join in, silky, fleshy flowers (especially jasmine, tuberose, champaca) shimmer over warm, damp earth, mosses and soft, rotten bark. Only the faintest hint of animal, leathery aromas (bisam, castoreum, hyrax) can be sensed in it, minty patchouli notes come to light, tempered by fur-like costus roots and subtle, warm resins (styrax, amber, galbanum). A dark olive-colored world rich in facets, of which new ones reveal themselves again and again, as if one were always discovering other places in the jungle, botanical as well as animalic.
In all its dense composition, the fragrance of the dreamed islands remains transparent in its overall impression, clearly to moderately projecting the dark heart of Papua over many hours.

Dark Heart of Papua N•O•A•M 2024

Main accords

Fragrance Notes

Smells similar

Reviews

Statements

Charts

Images

Popular by N•O•A•M