Scentzilla!

Kid Carpet is a musician from the UK who I love to bits. His music would be categorized as “experimental,” but what does that really mean to anyone? To me they’re flat out good songs. His choice of instruments, however, is really unusual. Remember those battery-powered toy guitars made for little kids? Know those cheap Casio keyboards that you still see being unloaded at garage sales? And Furbies? This is his medium. It’s awesome.

For me, those mysteriously lonesome shoes you see lying abandoned roadside are regrettable litter. But to Kid Carpet, that’s a song. An old ad for a carpet store becomes symphonic in his toy filled orchestra.

Clip from “There’s a Shoe” -

“Bristol Carpet Factory” in entirety, because it’s too short to reasonably be able to make a clip -

Sometimes I think “experimental” is really verbal shorthand for “playful.” When children and adults play, they try new things out - they experiment. Who doesn’t like to play?

From a discussion on another blog, I had to point out one of the weirdest fragrances I’ve smelled. Comme des Garçons’ Odeur 71 is, in all honesty, a terrible perfume. By that I don’t mean it’s a bad fragrance, it’s just not “perfumey” in the manner you usually think of fragrances being.

The typewriter ribbons I smelled in Man 2 are there right on the top. Then I get a little whiff of a weirdo on a bus drinking mystery booze in a paper sack. Then a car interior that’s been freshly cleaned with Armor All and had the felt-covered bucket seats vacuumed. Tree bark. Computers. Metal knives chopping bell peppers. Wilting and limpid flowers. Finally, there is laundromat, which seems fitting given the laundry list of weirdness here. Yet the scent is not industrial or overwhelming. It’s… light but strange. I find new irregular angles in it every time I smell it. There’s some great reviews of it at Basenotes, too.

I am too young to know how Coppertone suntan lotion used to smell in its 1960s incarnation, so I can’t comment on the veracity of the fragrance Christopher Brosius is trying to recreate with CB I Hate Perfume’s Beach 1966. However, it seemed a fun arcane idea to me. Sure enough, I get a strong sensation of suntan lotion, a little sea spray, and a neat touch of the way your skin smells when brushing off that sand crust that forms on your legs after splashing in the water and then sitting back down on the sand. It’s a little goofy, and a lot perfect. (I am a big fan of goofiness in general, so that’s also a compliment, heh.)

Kid Carpet’s CD “Ideas & Oh Dears” can be ordered via either Amazon UK or as an import via Amazon US. You can also purchase the album wherever you are from iTunes. I also DEEPLY recommend you watch his video for the song “Carrier Bag.” I’ve decided it’s the best music video I’ve ever seen, and that’s saying a ton from me, because I actually OWN the Duran Duran video collection, and as we all know, Rio rules. What’s that? Oh shush up, Rio does SO rule. I refuse to acknowledge otherwise.

On a whole ‘nother note, Scentzilla was recently feature along with several other sites in Cosmetic World’s latest issue. Which? Feels awfully nifty:

Other featured sites include:

• Basenotes
• Scenteur7
• Perfume Posse
• Beauty News NYC
• Now Smell This
• Victoria’s Own
• Bois de Jasmin

Yesterday it snowed! Okay, so it was light, and it melted right away, but it snows so rarely in my corner of town that we had fun with it.

It was cold enough though that I realized it’d be my last shot for a while at wearing Comme Des Garcons’ 2 Man. The last time I can remember pulling out 2 Man was on Christmas Eve, and sure enough, one spritz of it on my skin and a little snow brought Christmastime right back to me.

The opening blast always weirds me out just a little. Whatever notes are ascribed to it don’t matter to me. It smells like typewriter ribbons, and I move back through time and space to my ninth grade typing class:

the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog

The memory of it jars me. On the one hand I fondly recall my silly self at that age again, and on the other I can never forget the time I caught an ungodly flu and tried to get through the class typing as fast as I could while stopping every three seconds to wipe and blow my nose. To this day I remember the crazy high fever I had, but I could not bear leaving the classroom to see the nurse. Her office had the stench of death about it. I don’t mean figuratively, I mean literally. Some rodent had obviously died inside the walls, but apparently it hadn’t occured to anyone that removing a decaying animal corpse from the health offices might be a good idea.

I digress. Which is kind of the point about this fragrance. It’s swirly abstractions provoke imaginings of things real and unreal, but also stir memory.

2 Man recalls the way Gres Cabaret seems filtered through a cloud of smoke without smelling smokey. Its woody notes are real but unidentifiable, like staring out a train window and watching the blurry trees fly past. Mutant spices that I know without recognition drift by until we land at nutmeg. The nutmeg of 2 Man’s dry down is warm and dry, mixed into the smeared streaky watercolors of an abstract forest.

Upon reflection, I don’t think this is one of those men’s scents that very many women could see themselves in. Nor can I see just any man wearing it either. 2 Man isn’t too weird, however it’s unusual enough that it won’t be quite to everyone’s taste. Which is fine. All’s the more for me, heh.

EDIT: Oops, forgot to mention a great review of this scent by Basenotes member Indie_Guy (it’s the second one on the scroll down.) I think he’s dead-on with his astute observation that 2 Man seems like a bit of a pastiche comprised of elements from other Comme des Garcons fragrances.