ScottMcArron

A deceptively simple fragrance of only 3 main notes. However, the ingredients are of incredible quality, one being a big 30% shot of fermented Indian oud. That’s a massive amount, if you didn’t already know.

The oud starts off with petrol fumes that hit straight to the back of the throat. A bit cheesy and medicinal. After about an hour the petrol vibe fades and the big hit of oud mellows out nicely.

The cocoa mixes well with the oud almost like it’s an extension of it. Very well blended as if the oud was distilled along with the cocoa powder. I wouldn’t be surprised . An interesting choice though to pair that with rose as I wouldn’t think cocoa and rose would be a great combination, and indeed it’s not my favorite but damn it works somehow and sets it apart from a standard oud rose.

The rose is of the red variety, luscious, wet, and glistening. It wafts up to your nose and makes you feel like you just stepped through a dewy rose garden after a morning rain. Lovely.

Tonight, I’m wearing it for the second time this week and sampling it next to two other legendary oud roses: Ottoman Empire IV (my favorite to appreciate at home) and FM’s The Night (my favorite to wear out). And these other two I do admit I like better, they are masterpieces, but B&tB is also incredible in its own right while being much simpler and straightforward. Still a contender and well worth the price. And I’d be very comfortable wearing it out on the town after the initial dry down when the petrol fades rather than just appreciating it home. A big winner for me!

The bottle is also beautiful and the sprayer best in class.

Thank you, Russian Adam, for your passion and love you pour into your perfumes! Eagerly awaiting what comes next!

Another “luxury” house putting out overpriced mostly crap perfumes. I’d even take Xerjoff and Boadicea the Overpriced over this because even they have a few decent perfumes worthy of a FB, if not overly priced FBs.

Of the brand’s lineup, of which I’ve sampled 21 (from their discovery set + now 2 samples of this one), this and two others stood out as the “best” to me. But let’s keep this in context of mediocrity.

Given the note listing, I was hoping for a decent oud/rose/frankincense to help me milk my bottle of FM’s The Night a few years longer. I did not find that here. It’s not a terrible scent but it’s far from great or worthy of wasting any money. Long story short, if a bottle were gifted to me I might wear it once a year or so, or maybe re-gift it to a friend who is not very much into perfumes and doesn’t know better.

I don’t want to waste too much more time here as I already have by sampling this house so I’ll cut to the chase. It’s mostly synthetic. They claim to use real oud so they probably use some. It’s not a lot. They’ve clearly bolstered it with some synthetic compounds to come across like there’s more. And the oud dies away anyway after about 2 hours leaving just an ambery rose mess.

These are the last words I’ll write about the house and the last thoughts I’ll give it.

Cheers!

I speak as a studied musician and bass player of 30 years. This is more tenor than bass. From the name, I’d think this would be more about thick, deep, resinous notes. Clearly it’s not.

Bright, green, grassy, floral, sour grapefruit citrusy, spicy, peppery. On the color spectrum, I visualize orange, green, earthy tones.

Comparatively, sits between TdH Parfum and Roja’s Isola Blu. Isola Blu is more colorful, like light refracted through a prism, fruitier, juicier, brighter, sweeter in the base, more cheerful particularly in the opening hour. They become more similar in the dry down. Bear in mind these are subtle differences I’m speaking of. These two are very, very close and the differences come out only on close inspection.

I do have to say that the dry down does become a bit muddled here after an hour or so while Isola Blu retains the note separation and distinctness. The latter is somewhat higher quality but you will pay dearly for that very small difference.

Performance is comparative to the two aforementioned. Ultimately about average for a fresh citrusy perfume, or what I like to refer to as classy sillage, for yourself and those close to you. For all day enjoyment, you’ll want to take a travel sprayer. Eg. if you spray before going to work you’ll probably want to spray again on your lunch break.

I would not call Basso a great fragrance, but I do really enjoy it as I don’t demand too much from fresh citrusy summer fragrances. It’s an easy, likable wear with enough depth and complexity to keep me interested.

For those with small collections, this would be redundant if you had TdH Parfum or Isola Blu. For those like me with larger collections, you may find enough nuanced differences to have any or all of these. I am biased towards this one because of the name and my love for bass playing. And the quality and price ratio sits nicely in the attainable luxury spectrum: better than a standard designer and not outrageously priced where I’d need to worry about my bank account with every spray. But once my travel atomizer of Isola Blu is gone I’ll likely be purchasing a bottle of that too to wear on more rare occasions.

Edit: I keep coming back to this thought. This is the smell of Sprite as a perfume.

A pleasant, easy to wear fruity oud with modest performance.

The oud is slightly sour, almost yeast-like, non-animalic. The tangy apple is not the sweet sour green apple of Promise but rather like dehydrated red apple chips. Mixes wonderfully with the rose and orange blossom. Very well blended. Otherwise, kind of boring. Seems to be missing something to set it apart or pique my interest.

I get about 6” projection in the first hour settling into 3-4” thereafter. Lasts quite awhile in that range. Not as good as my Bortnikoff’s, for instance, which most are rated as moderate (~7.5/10).

It’s very good, but it’s not super great and can’t compete in the Bortnikoff and Areej le Doré space, or even Frederic Malle’s middle eastern line although those can get ridiculously expensive.

I’d be happy to add it to the collection on a steeply discounted price but it’s just not quite worth the asking price, IMO. And I’m not sure I’d ever choose to wear it over the aforementioned brands. I’d spray Promise before this every time, even though it doesn’t have oud, but I love castoreum and the castoreum note juxtaposed with that fresh, spicy, sweet, sour green apple is simply amazing. And I can’t imagine anyone familiar with Bortnikoff and AlD being very impressed with this.

For me and my collection and where I’m at, this is a pass. There’s better out there at this price point. YMMV! Cheers!

…this is practically a Guerlain Heritage clone. I despise clones. I don’t care if a clone is 99% of the original at 1/100th the cost. I will buy the original. It’s a matter of respect. But here’s where I’m conflicted. Most clones are shadows of their original. Roja is different. He takes a beautiful thing and somehow makes it….more.

If Heritage was the perfect mature man’s amber fougere of the 90’s, Danger is the updated, luxurious version for the 2020’s.

Rather than a proper review, I’ll leave this comparative image I haven’t been able to get out of my head for the last couple years:

Heritage: a warm dimly lit study, leather bound books most of which have a layer of dust about them adorn the walls, dark cherry wood furniture. An older gent clear of mind and humbly intelligent sits in a plush leather chair doning a full beard and wearing a comfortable cardigan smoking a pipe and drinking single malt scotch, reading an actual physical book (they still exist, fwiw).

Danger: that older gent’s son, his father through and through, a man of similar but more modern tastes, finely groomed with short stubble as you may see in fashion magazines, luxury designer striped suit, vaping rather than smoking, living in an über-clean modern black&white apartment, sitting on (not in) a tightly molded leather chair, also sipping a lovely aged scotch as his father would do, reading on his Kindle, no physical book in sight (as that would depart from the clean minimalist aesthetic).

I respect Heritage for being the original. I love Danger for being the modern luxurious interpretation.