Slumberhouse, an overview (2014)

How is a line of perfume best viewed? Comparison is easier to see when it’s apples to apples. But the comparison to other perfume houses doesn’t shed much light on Slumberhouse.

Why does the comparison of Slumberhouse, and perfumer Josh Lobb, to other perfume lines give so little information? Take Tauer Perfumes and Parfums de Nicolai, two other niche companies that, like Slumberhouse, feature the work of one perfumer. Is the classical training the distinction? Patricia de Nicloai's line by comparison looks like a microcosm of Guerlain’s. She is deeply steeped in classical perfumery and training, so let’s exclude her. Andy Tauer identifies himself as self-taught, as Lobb is, but Tauer’s work runs parallel to tradition. He is a chemist by training and his exploration of composition has allowed him to recreate some principals of classical composition while the aesthetics of an outsider (of the perfume academy, that is) have let him move beyond the status quo. Lobb’s work has taken him further from the mainstream and yields results that both stand on their own and are an interesting commentary on contemporary perfumery.

As for a general comparison to the niche market, there has been a lot of work in the past few years focussing on resinous, balsamic, incense-based perfumes. Perfumes composed of base-note materials. Deep, dark, dank perfumes I think of as the neo-ouds. They follow oud-ness in the same way that a generation of patchouli gourmand-florals followed Thierry Mugler Angel. Imitation and derivation. A glance at the timeline and a sniff of the perfumes will tell you that Lobb hasn’t chased trends so much as followed his own initiative. Others may or may not have followed. It’s out of my scope to call him a leader, but he doesn’t appear to be a follower.

There are currently six perfumes available from the Slumberhouse site. Jeke (2008), Ore (2009), Norne (2012), Sova (2012), Pear & Olive (2012), Sadanne (2014). Vikt (2009) is also available at the few retailers who sell the line. In addition to these six I have tried: Grev (2009), Mare (2010), Flou (2011), Baque (2012), Sova (2012), and Zahd (2013). All but Sadanne are samples from a friend’s collection.

Jeke, Vikt, Ore and Norne form the core of the line and, along with Baque, seem like expressions of a similar impulse. They share a vocabulary that I didn't and still don't nearly understand. They cover a range of olfactory qualities in the resinous, balsamic, herbal, woody, leathery/smoky range. They explore compositional methods that deflect the norms of pyramidal and linear scent structures. Some Slumberhouse fragrances have been made in eau de perfum concentration, but, with the exception of Pear and Olive, they are currently made in extrait. They aren’t so much alike as they seem to explore a related set of ideas.

Flou, Zahd and Sadanne all take fruit and twist it into shapes I never imagined.

Grev, P ear & Olive, Mare stood out as the distinctive one-offs, statement pieces. Grev made wood floral. Pear & Olive posits that attractiveness need not in fact be beautiful. Mare. Fuck. Mare is a brined, spiced apple pie with a leather crust. I’m not sure it’s successful, but I’d like a second helping.

Lobb seems to have a fascination with the materials and doesn’t want to hide them in perfume. He challenges them, bends them into unexpected shapes. An advantage of approaching perfumery through the side door of having been self-taught is not reacting to the system. Slumberhouse isn't iconoclastic, just different. The variable line-up, limited releases and reworking of formulae suggest that the process and the thinking behind it are as interesting to Lobb as the end products. He doesn’t pander. If he did, he’d continue to make Zahd, Baque and Rume.

The Slumberhouse line’s perpetual flux tells me about the audience/market. Lobb prejudices quality over constancy. Slumberhouse’s dependability is in the caliber of the product, not in the regularity of its production. The perfumer reaches to the audience and the audience must reach back. He makes you work for it.

So, the current line-up:

Jeke is the center of a grouping of equally dense notes. Rather than fight each other the materials form an amalgam and present a unified front. It is composed of a number of heavy pieces counterbalanced to make a specific shape. Although dense, it is nimble and doesn’t get weighed down. Jeke has less to do with textural qualities than some of the other perfumes in the line. It deals with gravity, and shows how Lobb manipulates the dynamics of aroma-materials without resorting to the traditional olfactory pyramid. Spray Jeke on your arm and you wear it like an atmosphere. The less dense elements are further out from the center, but when you bring your nose in close it's like coming in for a landing.

Jeke demonstrates a quality common to many of the perfumes in the line. A classical perfume’s volatility is experienced over time. Top notes fly off the skin first and burn off most quickly. Heart notes next, and then the base notes remain for the long-haul. A similar progression occurs with Jeke in space rather than time. As an extrait, its real effect is felt up close. What you smell in Jeke walking past it is different than what you smell when you have it on your wrist under your shirt which is different than what you smell when you put your wrist to your nose. It is coherent at each juncture, yet at a distance it smells like a dried herb that you've never smelled before. Closer it smells like strong tea. Closer still it smells like smoke. It’s like wearing a magic act.

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Sova changes over time more than the other Slumberhouse perfumes. Again, not top notes to basenotes. Over the course of 12 or so hours, smelling Sova is like hiking to a destination along one path and returning via another. Different perspectives give different information and over the course of time conclusions change as new information is revealed.

Sova is distinctive and isn't likely be confused with another perfume. I'm told that this is due to the sweet clover which is the primary note of the fragrance. Still, enhanced by other notes such as tobacco and honey/beeswax it can feel like a bit of a tease, with suggestions and intimations that lead you in a direction only to be uncertain how you got there. Mind you, it's not demure. It’s fucking huge. Sort of a blunderbuss of a tease.

I've worn Sova six or seven times now. Each time my experience is somewhere between OCD and repetitive motion syndrome. I can't stop drawing my arm to my nose to sniff it over and over. I never come to a firm conclusion about Sova. I can't quite make sense of it but I can't keep myself away from it. It's an endless cycle of infatuation.

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A snow-covered forest smells muffled compared to the the forest at any other time of year. We tend to assume that the snow covering everything is what keeps us from smelling the leaves, the roots, the branches, the soil. It’s easy to assume that you’re not smelling the forest gestalt simply because it’s covered in a blanket. But dig through the snow and you won’t smell it any better. It’s not the snow, it’s the cold that dull your sense of smell.

Vikt uses the sweet chill of licorice or anise to produce the same effect. The scent of compressed forest floor is filtered through frost. (Yes, I know. Norne is the forest perfume, but that's another season entirely.) It smells not so much dry as freeze dried. There’s moisture but its ability to enhance and carry scent is bound in ice. The freeze-dried quality accents the terseness. It doesn’t feel dense so much as very efficiently packed. Potent, but not effusive.

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Composed entirely of botanical materials, Norne is meant to suggest the scent of a forest. Having known this, my fear is that the perfume would read as an exercise. After wearing it for a few times I realized that it's not so much an exercise as a test. It's conjecture on my part but I can imagine that Lobb might have set these parameters as a challenge for himself. If that were the case, I doubt he would have released the perfume if it hadn’t been successful. Norne's evergreen forest includes the composting floor, the sap, the bark, the moisture. It's all coated with the scent of resinous green. Norne is Oregon’s Vent Vert.

Norne stand apart from the rest of the line not because the olfactory tone is so different than the others, but because it differs in concept. Slumberhouse perfumes, if they share a characteristic, seem to present their ideas through imagery. There is no implicit narrative and though they might suggest a setting or tone, they don’t portray. They don’t refer specifically to a specific notion or concept outside of themselves. Norne, on the other hand, is an olfactory depiction of a forest. All depiction is a reduction of a larger entity to a smaller frame. A distillation. But Norne is not a simplistic picture by any means. It is highly focussed and the complexity is disguised by the successful attempt to convey an entire environment via scent.

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I approach Ore very cautiously. It is Slumberhouse’s dare. It is the cautionary tale, the genie who grants dangerous wishes, the slapstick banana peel. It’s a gourmand, but, though not fruity in the least, it’s the poison apple. Want a gourmand perfume? Be careful what you wish for. Lobb gives you the treat and the trick in the same bottle. Set against a standard of cheap gourmand perfumery where flavor is mistaken for scent, Ore has a cocoa so dry I feel the need for a sip of water when I smell it. It also subverts my senses. It smells like the grey area between an herbal tincture and a glass of whiskey at the same time that the cocoa powder coats everything in dust. Dehydrated whiskey?

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If Ore was the taunt, Sadanne is the laughing fuck-you. For those who think that Slumberhouse is overly somber and lacks irony, Sadanne reveals that what might have appeared unsmiling is really just a great poker-face. As if to punk anyone who was derisive of Slumberhouse creating a floral fragrance, Lobb enters the ring with celebu-scents and the commercial marketing wizards and armed with a fruity floral. Take that Britney and Sephora! Sadanne presents a brilliant trap for the perfume cognoscenti. If you try to dismiss the opening strawberry compote in order to appreciate the seriousness of the perfume, you’ll miss the fun and the beauty of Sadanne. In established Slumberhouse form, the strawberry that smacks you in the face at the opening of Sadanne isn’t a top-note per se. It is the lead-in to a jammy, boozy darkening rose, but it doesn’t go away. It evolves but remains present throughout. Sadanne has precedent within the Slumberhouse line. Flou’s grape note and Zahd’s cranberry show how Lobb works with unabashed fruit notes to create sweet, resinous perfumes.

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Further messing with the notion of fruit, Pear & Olive, the only Slumberhouse perfume without a fabricated name, puts the fruit right out front, and then performs sleight of hand. With a twist on the logic that a tomatoes and avocados are fruits, Lobb gives us a new vegetable, the pear. Pear & Olive suggests the grainy texture of pear flesh, but is devoid of the sweetness that constitutes so much of the taste of a pear. This might as well have been called Tuber and Coconut. Pear & Olive is a dense, looping perfume that suggests a repetitive folding-in on itself. The scent bubbles up and doubles back into itself over and over. The cyclic pattern is more of a meditation than a rut. Like the sound of singing bowls or a mantra, the repetition serves as a focus. Pear & Olive is one of the few fully linear fragrances from Slumberhouse. 8 hours in, it smells like a quiet version of the first spray.

My other point of comparison for Pear & Olive is Etat Libre d’Orange’s Sécrétions Magnifiques. None of the few people I’ve mentioned this to agree with me, but Pear & Olive smells remarkably like SM to me. The metallic, oily properties suggest a good-smelling SM, a prospect I never thought possible.

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I’ve been sniffing this stuff for almost a year and still feel like I don’t get it. Doesn’t mean I don’t dig it, though, and I’m not giving up yet.

More to follow, I hope