CBMUSK

One of my top five favorites. All of my favorite scents smell drinkable to me, like I want to inhale them into my soul. This smells like what I think in my mind musk smells like, not like baby powder or other musks I've smelled. To me it is very light to medium and I will probably wear it heavier, I'd like more projection because I think it is inoffensive and very yummy, but very very sexual at the same time. Reminds me of all of the best aspects of male and female erogenous body parts.

(Absolute version) The 1st time I smelled this it was a serious scrubber. On a man's skin (and admittedly having applied too much) this was pungent, musty, honey-sweet musk, like a feral creature's sex hormone marking in the breeding season that strikes fear into the hearts of humans because the scent is too WILD, too dirty and interconnected with danger to our noses. This was accompanied by a huge dose of something that smelled of decay, though I couldn't place whether it was human, mushroom, or of other origin. A few days later I couldn't help it; it had intrigued me. What I sniffed out of the bottle wasn't quite what it had been on my guy's skin, so I decided to be brave and try it on myself. With 3 dabs just from the cap (vs the mouth of the bottle) it's still strong, but much more doable. Now the weird, not-quite-honey sweetness is played up rather than that unsettling decay note. It still has some old smell underneath that I can't place exactly... There's also a note closer up that resembles plastic when it's almost hot enough to melt but not quite. This note perplexes me, I have no idea what it is but it's there, being strange in the background. It weaves in and out subtly over the hours. As a side note, having smelled real hyrax and other animal musk tinctures now (Soivohle's in their first renditions), this is not one of those sourish, intensely forest-like musks though it does retain a certain civet-butt quality that they all share. Undeniably animalic, rich, and powerfully musky/musty with golden honey tones alongside some fungal decay. CHALLENGING. I can see this being my newest love/hate obsession. For now I'll click 'like' because it has my attention, that's for sure. DO NOT OVERAPPLY!! P.S. I have the old version of the absolute (15ml bottle). My juice is not dark like in the picture, more of a light golden color.

An intensely sexy fragrance. Smells like the male human body in heat, or the idea of it. Absolutely wearable for a night on the town, or at home with someone else. So many men's fragrances are intense, layered, or artificial. This one is what it is... far less risky than Axe (blech), 80s favorites like Kouros or Fahrenheit, or modern I-dare-yous like Fat Electrician. This one is hot, and direct. My all-time favorite animalic and definitely one of my all-time favorites. Similar to vintage Kourous, minus that "urinal cake" smell that makes Kouros so divisive. Also, it has the synthetic slipperiness of several other CB I Hate Perfume scents (dialed down), but that synthetic quality I think improves this one, and makes it more evocative.

Musk is a difficult note for me to quantify. So many perfumes list musk as a base note, but it's hard for me to figure out what it's doing "adding depth," "anchoring" other notes. It's hard for me to smell with other scents hanging around, being more prominent. CBMusk is a very clean, wearable fragrance. Musky, yes, I get it now, and also damp, vanillic, woody, and smoky, but not like something is burning, which I know makes no sense. If you could seize a box of smoke and take it away from the site of the fire and then smell it, it smells like that kind of smoke. A resinous smoke, but not really like incense. I think it smells quite a bit like styrax, too. Unusual and interesting. Worth sampling.

Holy smokes, when I put this on it was SUPER sexy! It almost reminded me of hanging out with that hot guy friend from school who was also kind of grungy and the smell of smoke lingers on his skin. A very effortlessly cool scent. On a weird side note, every time I caught a whiff of this on my wrist, I was instantly transported to Donkey Kong 3's Murky Mill level. Musty, dark, and exciting!