After Every Ounce of Joy (Leaves My Body)

UPDATE: I bought a full bottle for my birthday. I own Resonance and Beast Mode. And AEOOJ definitely shares similarities to the two previous ones, especially Resonance. What I get in this is the woodiness, the cedar touch. I may be completely delusional, but I smell that wood shaving, but not quite as strong as Resonance. There are other notes in here, which are supposed to resemble gasoline or rubber or something industrial. If someone hadn't already suggested those associations, I would not detect them. The three bottles I now own are analogous to whisky in color. Resonance is the darkest, as if it were aged 18 years. Then comes AEOOJ, a 12-year-old whisky. Beast Mode is the lightest, closer to yellow than amber, maybe a young whisky, 10-years-old. Of course I love all three of these. If I had to say my absolute favorite it would be Beast Mode because I appreciate the yuzu. OLD REVIEW: I'm bought two bottles of Chris Rusak's perfumes, R320 and Beast Mode, and there is nothing out there that I 'm aware of that compares to Mr. Rusak's genius. The same is true of Leaves My Body. It was partly cloudy, kind of cool, a gray day, and I was looking for a scent to wear by opening up my cabinet and this is what I chose over 20 others. LMB strikes me as: wet leaves, dry whisky, rubber, metal, wood shavings, and sawed lumber. But what's wondrous about this is its mystery. You never are quite sure of what notes are present, but this allows the perfume to take control of you and put you in its hands; to soothe, comfort, relax, and promote intuition, music, imagination and reverie. Chris has been open about his struggles in life, and there is a therapeutic element to his creations, but without being too psychoanalytical, I want to say these scents, and LMB are of the highest artistry and worth every penny.

This won a Fragrantica award in 2020, and it certainly deserved it. I've never really smelled anything quite like this. @Caldrumr described it as "a mechanic working on a car in the forest on a foggy day," and that is actually pretty accurate. But it's a big 1950s car with those vinyl seats. And it's definitely a pine forest. Chris Rusak uses pine resins a lot in his creations and in this one there is a really intense and almost mentholated pine core, that is there from the start but gradually emerges more strongly from beneath a complex layer of motor oil and vinyl, notes which should be harsh and synthetic but are somehow soft and almost natural, probably because of the amber they are combined with. As the scent develops further, it gets more woody, with a hint of vetiver and dirt, but still retains some of the scent of the auto repair shop. This scent hits the memory centres of the brain hard, but it's like a memory you don't have, like you're a replicant from Blade Runner and this memory has been implanted in you and you can't fix it to a real time and place but, nevertheless, there it is every time you catch a whiff of the fragrance from your wrist or beard, tugging at your imaginary past. This is a masterpiece.

A structure of pine resin drives (for me) a psychedelic celebration of manual labor -- the bone dry florality of gasoline, the penetrating earthiness in your clothes after a day of working around heavy machinery. EDIT: A few months later, this has become my favorite fragrance to wear. Nothing about it is ever cloying or overwhelming, it hardly reads as a "perfume" to me. Which isn't to say it doesn't smell "good" - it does smell good, in a way that's an actual personal comfort. It's a very real smell, the smell of a particular kind of day. There's something new every single time I wear it, some new memory (usually but not always a good one), some unexamined overtone. I think Rusak approaches his work from a place of conceptual coherence, and that's the thing I value most in the work of any artisan. I just bought the follow-up, "LMB." There's no entry for it yet, so I'll just say it here: it's definitely a successor, but there's something new and redemptive in it, it's a garden in early April, little green shoots growing out of the rich woody humus of AEOOJ. There's an old song that goes: "You Must Believe in Spring."

This is well and truly my holy grail of fragrance. Now that it's gone forever, I regret not buying 5 bottles. It is absolutely brilliant. If anyone has a bottle of this they'd like to part with, please message me. I will gladly purchase it. I was looking for something that combined a sort of industrial feel with a masculine comforting sexy vibe. Settled on this and blind bought it. It was the perfect thing. At first this smells like a permanent marker. That soon dissipates a bit and gives way to a truly ingenious combination of woodsy vetiver, pine, and patchouli with the industrial feeling of rubber and gasoline. It's giving daddy, and he works in a machine shop. But it also has some kind of musty wood, old books, library thing happening, which could be unpleasant but it's perfect here. This is extremely sexy without relying on any of the usual "sexy" formulas. Truly unique, I've never smelled anything else similar. I wore it recently to see a certain boy toy and he commented the next day that his pillows smelled so good. So you know it's doing the trick.

Being discontinued, so move quick if you're going to. But not too quick, because I need some time to decide if I want a full bottle. It is a masterpiece. Completely distinct, subtle, immediately familiar and also unrecognizable. If I'm being honest I don't get any of the notes listed other than amber and musk, I get oakmoss, mold, willow, an old book in a musty attic with the windows open for the first time in years and a light breeze blowing through carrying pollen from the trees in the bayou. It doesn't smell like death. It does smell like decay. But late in the process, the spring after death, as nature takes over. I'm almost certain it shares an ingredient with imaginary authors slow explosions, but I couldn't tell you which one.