Dark Heart of Papua N•O•A•M 2024

"It had grown dark, without Akeret being able to say whether it had dawned. The dark weave of the forest was illuminated by the thunderless flashes of fireflies, like sheet lightning in hundreds of skies." (Lukas Maisel, Book of Dreamed Islands, Rowohlt 2020)
They echoed in herb-green roots, from whose fingers flowers grew, seduction dripping from silken life. Boundless, shadows of beings seemed to flow through trees and soil.
**
New Oceans And Meridians (N.O.A.M. Botanical Perfumes) describes itself as an olfactory time-space travel agency. The Swiss label exclusively uses high-quality natural raw materials for its complex compositions. It maintains personal contact with small distilleries, traders, and manufacturers.
For "Essences - Dark Heart of Papua," homegrown patchoulis from India and Java, artisan patchoulis from Papua, Sulawesi, and Madagascar, as well as a vintage Seychelles patch that was macerated with castoreum, hyrax, and costus for two years, were used. Various types of oud from Papua, Malaysia, and East India form the second backbone of the fragrance.
With "Dark Heart of Papua," the wearer unlocks a ticket to a jungle like that in Lukas Maisel's "Book of Dreamed Islands," of course with the author's consent regarding the scent manifestation of his words. While Maisel's protagonist Akeret tries to find the "missing link" between man and animal, N.O.A.M creates a "missing link" between nature and animal.
Indeed, at the beginning, there is a diffuse green-yellow glow of fireflies (bay leaf, cardamom, verbena), like an illuminated mist (frankincense) in the dark green, humid jungle of Papua, depicted in numerous shades of patchouli varieties and eagle woods. Thus, a robust impression of earthy-woody-green-rooted notes emerges behind the fireflies. Gradually, smoky wood notes join in, shimmering silky-fleshy flowers (especially jasmine, tuberose, champaca) over moist warm earth, mosses, and soft, decayed bark. Only very faintly can animalic-leathery aromas (musk, castoreum, hyrax) be sensed, as mintier patchouli notes surface, toned down by fur-like costus roots and subtle warm resins (styrax, amber, galbanum). A dark olive-colored world rich in facets, from which new aspects continually reveal themselves, as if one were discovering different places in the jungle, both botanical and animalistic.
The scent of the dreamed islands remains transparent in its overall impression despite its dense composition, projecting clearly to moderately over many hours the dark heart of Papua. It came in a small wooden treasure chest, in which, nestled among straw beside the bottle, was also a beautifully packaged soap with the same scent, handcrafted by N.O.A.M in cooperation with the Swiss artisan soap manufacturer Voyage.

Strike dark, wild heart
Hidden in bitter green
The camphor mist
Where the shadows of fleshy leaves
Merge with the furry breath
Of black soils

Strike dark, wild heart
To the rhythm of distant drums
By glowing fires
Beyond the lurking eyes
In the underbrush

Strike dark, wild heart
Under the black silk
Rain-soaked blossoms
On my skin

Strike dark, wild heart
Because it’s not the sun
That makes the moon shine
But the darkness

**

The small Swiss manufactory N.O.A.M. - short for New Oceans And Meridians - aims to open up foreign worlds to us through olfactory means and invites us to leave familiar paths and expand horizons with complex, original scents made from the highest quality raw materials. In the case of Dark Heart of Papua, this journey leads us with a seamlessly blended mix of hand-picked oud and patchouli varieties right into the dark green hell of a tropical jungle.
Hand on heart: I don’t know much about oud and often have trouble distinguishing it from patchouli, depending on the provenance. Dark Heart of Papua seems designed to finally blur this elusive boundary for me. After a sparkling green opening with plenty of minty camphor, underscored by slightly smoky galbanum, where I perceive a minimal hint of barn-like oud, the fragrance reveals rugged woods that gradually become softer, eventually crumbling into a bitter, earthy jungle floor rooted deep in vetiver.
Leather-animalic notes have left their paw prints here, leading to ink-bitter moss paths, until unexpectedly flower petals shimmer. Occasionally, fine threads of smoke and bitter herbs curl through the picture, yet the fragrance, in all its darkness, becomes a softly whispering floral leather.
Dark Heart of Papua maintains a masterful balance between preserving the raw originality of the essences used and the artisanal finesse of a self-taught exceptional talent, creating a pull in all conceivable shades of green that makes at least my wild dark heart beat a little faster.

Thank you very much, dear Svezenkar, for unexpectedly sparing me from sniffing an empty vial.

In the 60s and 70s, we would occasionally receive visits from a missionary who was on home leave to see old friends. He told stories from Papua New Guinea, where he lived. We seven children listened, fascinated, irritated, bewildered... many questions remained unanswered, sparking our imagination...
With these thoughts in my mind, I looked forward to the scent that could, I hoped, take me to this distant island.
It does!
With the first breath, I am in. This spicy, dark scent! How I love it! The journey begins. My heart races with excitement. It gets darker and darker. Green! Incredible green! Dark, colorful, moist green! Jungle... It must be like this! The path is barely recognizable. Dense foliage. Tall trees. It smells even more intense. 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 quiet. Everything inside me becomes calm. I lean against a tree trunk. Close my eyes. It feels as if I am breathing in and out the entire forest. I need courage. I am not yet daring enough to breathe deeply. The forest is too vast! Light draws my gaze to the sky. I climb up the tree. Clear air surrounds me. I sit at the very top. My gaze sweeps over the treetops. Green expanse. Now! A deep breath. I inhale this vastness, the forest, the wood of the venerable, old trees. I feel supported. At home. Trust. Basic trust. Tears of joy. Slowly, very slowly, I climb back down the trunk. Leaving the forest behind.
What is that? Something new is approaching me. Unknown. Smoke. I walk toward it. It is a settlement. Muddy, dusty gravel path. It leads past ochre-colored huts. Spicy air hangs between the clay huts. I sit down on an old, sun-warmed wooden bench. Laughing children play in the muddy, dusty village square. A gentle breeze carries a foreign scent over to me. 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! Of dry grass and herbs under half-high, 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 exotic scent deeply and close my eyes.
Suddenly, I find myself with a large black dog in my arms. My nose is buried in its fur. Its warm body, its slow breath bring me deep calm and peace.
I must have fallen asleep. My wrist smells green. Unexcited dark green.
“Was there something? Can't be. I am just a simple field-forest-meadow scent.”
“Oh yes!! There was something!!! You are a special field- and forest- and garden scent! Simply a NOAM! It was like that! It still is!”
And it remained so for many hours.
At some point, it became even softer, more patchouli-like, and occasionally a bit sweeter.

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

Friday, finally the end of work and
everyone is already waiting for me
Unfortunately, I couldn't get the whole day off, but it doesn't matter, now the vacation is finally here. At exactly 12 o'clock, I leave the factory premises in my olive green Passat B2
I rush home quickly; hardly had I arrived when everyone came out of the entrance door with their travel luggage. Unfortunately, there was no lunch today because
she is already a bit annoyed but made delicious sandwiches for all of us. But it doesn't matter, without losing much time we set off towards the highway. It was hot the entire way to Bella Italia; I got a campsite from work by the sea, of course, and I get half of the fees back, so like every year in summer, it feels the same somehow, but it doesn't matter.
After countless hours of traffic jams and excruciating heat without air conditioning and lunch, we reached
our beloved domicile. She took care of the reception while I grabbed a refreshing 7up from the vending machine. The car parked exactly as always next to the tent; you never really know. She suddenly hugged me very sweetly and was like a different person, somehow like reborn. Well, I thought, everything is good for now. The kids had slept the whole trip and were slowly waking up
In the meantime, I take care of the living quarters; the rest probably goes shopping with my hard-earned D-Mark
but it doesn't matter, now let's enjoy the well-deserved vacation.
--------------------------------------------
What a spectacle, basically a citrus fougère of the old days, moss, incense, sweet myrrh, benzoic tightened, wild herbs dipped in honey, bitter green grassy kissed by mint liqueur, peppery sharp transition into Zen tea land, cumin provocatively on cedar wood and vintage earth, the whales crawl forward, it was a beautiful time.
Thank you to Floyd for the testing opportunity.
Wishing you all a great start into the new year
when the time comes.

The fragrances from the small Swiss perfume manufacturer N.O.A.M. that I have had the pleasure of experiencing so far are characterized by their consistently very complex compositions, in which, however, the individual notes are surprisingly clear to perceive. Although they often tend to be darker scents, they still possess a great lightness and transparency. Floyd characterized this in a review as pointillist flickering. And the manufacturer itself, seemingly quite aware of this special quality of its compositions, always finds very fitting images for this effect - be it late Gothic "Millefleurs" tapestries or the "Kaleidoscope," which unfolds a whole into infinite facets and thus opens new perspectives of perception.

Here, however, it is not the name. It immediately brings to mind Joseph Conrad, despite the continent being wrong, and inevitably "the horror, the horror." Fortunately, the fragrance reflects nothing of that. No, in this case, the more fitting hint is found in a accompanying text from N.O.A.M. This quotes a passage from Lukas Maisel's "Book of Dreamed Islands," which speaks of the "thunderless flashes of fireflies" before the "dark weave of the forest." This is a powerful image and conveys the aforementioned effect just as aptly, perhaps even more poetically than the other chosen metaphors. This forest is tropical, dense, and heavy, so the scene from "Heart of Darkness" somehow fits as an image for the underlying 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 background fabric against which the fireflies dance consists here of two main components: patchouli and oud. The former is used in the form of five different raw material components from various origins: in addition to oils from New Guinea, Indonesia, and Madagascar, there are also, as always with N.O.A.M., extraordinary rarities, in this case a vintage maceration from the Seychelles and a self-produced absolute from homegrown cultivation (!) Additionally, there are at least three different oud components of varying origins and qualities.

In vetiver fragrances, I have found that the combination of various raw materials, each with its own character, greatly enhances the complexity of the note in the final product, simultaneously highlighting the different facets of vetiver and uniting them in a fragrance that gains immense depth. I can only assume that the same applies to patchouli and oud: that the scent spectrum of these notes is expanded and complicated by the components of different origins, which complement and simultaneously "sharpen" each other. But the special quality of the hand-picked essences is certainly also decisive here. The oud building blocks complement the earthy-fresh and bitter-spicy notes of patchouli with a slightly smoky-tarry component. And for this reason, indeed, some blossoms flash forth, brighter notes emerge, and push to the forefront. Jasmine, champaca, tuberose could seem heavy in their own right, but are rather brought to radiance by the bright spicy peaks of pepper and cardamom.

This creates a unity, which makes me wonder if the image of the fireflies is still entirely fitting. Another image, or a series of images, comes to mind: Fritz Winter's "Forces of the Earth." From the dark heart of Papua's tropical forests shine sparkling crystals that do not reflect sunlight but seem to glow from within, pulsating and turning the forest itself into a single living being. Once again, great olfactory cinema.

As always in the "Essences" series from N.O.A.M., this is a limited fragrance that cannot be reproduced as some of the components used were unique. That is the price of high quality: uniqueness and irretrievability. For this, there is for the first time at N.O.A.M. a suitable "care series" - consisting of a piece of soap. I can say nothing about it, except that it comes from a similarly demanding manufacturer as the fragrance itself and thus should be a very successful addition. The justification for this expansion of the product range sounds as sober as it is convincing: "Even adventurers need a wash from time to time!"

I would like to thank BeJot once again for the sample.