Io

Glorious geology! Rugged yet richly aromatic, almost fruity resins make up its incredibly strong backbone - lasts alllll day on me, which is horribly rare - and rule the roost here. Not a whole lot of frankincense to my nose, it smells more towards the sweet 'n sour, less airy feel of myrrh and labdanum, but at first you might be more distracted by the amazingly down-to-earth soil note - not muddy, not sandy, but somehow rich and loamy and deeply peppery in the first few hours. It's rough-hewn, challenging stuff - the earth & cypress notes combine at first to give an effect something like really strongly mentholated mud - but LOVELY mentholated mud - for a few hours. But this coarser edge recedes (?erodes?) a bit later to leave more fresh air for some really smoky smoke to waft about in, with the resins still thrumming away beautifully. Might be a bit too arty and odd to appeal to everyone - the twangier side of the resin mix can edge towards creosote and then on to urinous in some moments, and there's very little floral or gourmand to smarten up the rugged feel - but for me at least it's an absolutely gorgeous landscape to roam about in. Then it goes and confuses me completely by wafting something that seems like a much more eccentric, less sweet Baccarat Rouge 540 (whaaaat?) across my nose every now and then and all of my theories about it implode. Truly impressively individual, character-filled stuff; a really sincere nature-heavy scent which makes even some of D S & Durga's more outdoorsy adventures seem a little over-groomed, a little urban-hipster, a bit try-hard by comparison. Absolute love, absolute want. ETA: a dream realised, at great cost - because when I heard it was being discontinued, the idea of living without ever smelling Io again was horrific. In a few years I feel this one will have become legend. It deserves to be, for all the geological ages.

A little perplexed at where my review of this is? I'm sure I penned one way back when I first tried this but never mind. I can't really add much more than some of the brilliant reviews below, don't take my word for how good Io is, just read theirs. Io is my favourite creation from Chris and I will always associate him with resins and specifically the coulter pine resin that he gathers himself from his home in California. It's very weird smelling stuff, oddly sweet and almost myrrh like toffee and vanilla nuance, but highly medicinal and starkly modern smelling, like scotch tape or brown parcel tape. Not sure if it features heavily in Io but it's laden with resins regardless, translucent, and sepia stained and with a twang which replicates saffron in heat and impact, but not smell. As for the feel... This fragrance depicts an almost post apocalyptic, sci-fi landscape, the Dune novels, Tatooine, Mad Max, or ("get your ass to...") Mars. A barren, parched, place. I can hear sweeping, analogue synth pads and piercing, mock native riddims, or less cerebral and representing Io's rougher side, dusty, southern rock, like Kyuss or Clutch. The dry woodiness supplied by a smokey, lightly peppered, cedar and earthy tones but not bogged down or big smokey OD's. I like Chris's work and he's actually very eclectic despite having quite an uncluttered and minimal aesthetic. I said I feel he has an affinity with wood and earthy materials but that's perhaps because I haven't sampled his more floral offerings. He has control over his materials, unlike some indy perfumes that produce heavy soups & stews, he prefers to let the naturals have a little breathing space within a minimal, synthetic construction, and the mixed media approach is working for him. I think Io is a triumph, shame I didn't put my money where my mouth is now it's all gone. :(

This is the circle of life in a bottle. More than anything I've ever encountered, it captures the energies of the sun and the earth. As such, it's intimidating at first. I was afraid that it's dryness, intensity, and realness were too much for me. But when I first wore it outdoors, and realized how expansive and luminous it is when it has space to breathe, I understood that this is a truly special perfume. . Wearing Io makes me feel invigorated, it heightens all of my senses and awareness. I often find myself smiling in response to catching a whiff of it. It's so complex and long lasting, with swirling and tidal phases of dry sweetness, hot smoke, sharp woods, fiery incense, waxy resins, and a forest that's sometimes verdant, and sometimes burned to char and ash. I still marvel at its brilliance every time I wear it. . What I love about Io most is the fact that this perfume is so undeniably and lovingly born from trees. Not ripped from, squeezed from, or synthesized from, but respectfully gathered and respectfully used. This perfume speaks to a reverence for nature that makes it feel profoundly intimate to me. It gives me chills when I think about it. It pleases my pagan heart endlessly . . I also have to add that Io is *phenomenal* for layering -- it adds such depth and interest to anything that is sweet. My favorite combinations are Io with all of the Alien flankers (delicious) and Io with Tom Ford Urban Musk (debauchery).

The last perfume I discovered from this Rusak collection and once again, I'm quite transported by the discovery. On my side, I really have the earthy aspect, humus, manure, and decomposed organic matter. Memories of walking in the forest in the fall, picking mushrooms in a wicker basket, dry leaves, mud sticking to the boots; and then a wetter/darker aspect, a humid cellar, a wash house, an image of that kind... It's brown/black, quite beautiful, very smoky, freshly ground pepper, with incense waking up in the heart of this little mixture, making it something very enveloping, and above all totally out of time. It then evolves on a very resinous aspect, thuja, as if the little scene described above was slowly coming back to life. Like all the other perfumes tested by this perfumer, it's a painting, a picture, or a diorama. It's something you'd want to smell in a museum, in a gallery, and to experience at the same time as you look/listen to other beautiful things.

The top is all about an earthy/peaty sweet thing, clearly full of synthetics, but so well done. The base is all about a beautiful frankincense note, with support of resins, spices, cypress and most of all labdnaum. Great performance on my skin. The opening is quite unique, and the base is reminding me of several fragrances without being identical to any: Piguet Casbah (and several other incense fragrances), Piguet Bois Noir and ELdO Attaquer le Soleil. Masterpiece and, as expected for an indie house: not a masterprice... But I have to be honest: this has been a wow for me... everything has a price I guess. I bought a sample: my 3rd encounter with Chris Rusak, and my 3rd astonishment. Expensive but worth it. That said, given the great performance and the low versatility, even just 2ml will probably last me a life! Stunning. Colder evenings, 30+

Petrichor on a paved hiking trail or a trail with cedar chips after a good monsoon in the Sonora desert. This also reminds me of mulch. This is a good performer...a spray or two will do you. I get a baked asphalt smell with recently saturated desert. This reminds me of Larrea by La Curie, but this is much stronger and defined than Larrea. Of course, it is nearly double the cost too. Also, while Larrea is representative of a "pure" desert, Io gives more of an urban vibe. Maybe this is what a town on the Salton sea smells like after a rainstorm. I enjoy it for the art of it, and for what it represents. But...do I want a FB of it? Probably no. Edit: bought a full bottle. I personally love the cedar incense and soil in this.

I tried Chris’s sample set and I was drawn to this scent because I like incense fragrances. I got myself a Fb soon after. After spending a few more days with it I also realized that this fragrance starts off by reminding me of the smell of mulch, which is also very soothing and addictive to me. The dry down however is mostly a dusty frankincense. Do try before you buy, and be sure you like the smell of mulch and incense.

Io ..i want this for winter! very heavy woody scent for me..which i love! really makes me want to stay & cuddle all day. very unique scent, for sure not for everyone, even I on first sniff fell back cause how strong it is..but take it slowly inhale deeply & you can appreciate this to be one of your favorite!

It's difficult to find the words for my appreciation of this fragrance. This is as close to a signature scent as I have found. If the description intrigues you, then you should definitely give it a try!

I agree with much of the prior review from Atlas. I do like the fragrances from Chris, and I applaud the quality of the ingredients that went into each one that was represented in my sample set. You can feel the love and care that was put into them. And yet - I do feel that I must have been missing something when I saw the gushing reviews over each and every one of the fragrances. I will admit I may not have the most sophisticated nose in the world, yet I am far from a newbie to the world of scents. So, it was refreshing to see someone that disagreed with all that, because I feel the exact same way. That said: Io is my favorite of the lot for EXACTLY the rough, unfinished feel that it brings. The earthy, soil-ey, dank-but-not-dour vibe instantly transports me to a solitary place in nature – but elevated somehow. I think that is what many of the best scents do ... replicate nature, yet with a twist of fantasy. It's unfortunate that this scent is discontinued. I used the last of my sample today. It somehow feels very wrong to spend this amount of money on a full bottle of a luxury item in the middle of a pandemic, where so many people are hurting in so many ways. Maybe once things get back to (whatever will be) normal, I can revisit this scent. Hopefully a bottle will remain, and I can be transported once again to that solitary place in nature that exists in another dimension.

I recently tried this one again, and it is a much MUCH more earthy (and I say that nicely) version of Resonance. It's got soil, fungus and burnt matchstick in it, it's hard to phrase. I also get a bitter saliva accord, too. I know this must make me sound like the kind of person who listens to True Crime podcasts and tracks the price of petrol, but it really has this accord that is MEGA familiar to me -- when you're in ketosis, your saliva and breath has a weird acetone quality to it -- I detect parts of that in this -- only traces, but enough to put me off. Just like chucking your guts up on Baileys Irish Cream kinda ruins it for you for the rest of your life, so does the acetone ketosis breath thing. And I get it here. Luckily, Resonance is similar enough to this, and I already have it, so there's no heartache there, thank goodness...

OMG what an interesting, unique and remarkable mix this is! Right off the bat, I could never see myself wearing or even owning this, but it is SOOO different from almost everything I have ever tried! The smoke from Kerosene's "Blackmail", the earthy-peat from Strangers' "Scotch Peat", and the pepper hit from a CDG scent whose name escapes me at the moment. Wow. This is all I can sorta say at the moment. Wow There is an odd 'onion' accord that is struck in this, though. I don't mind onions AT all in ANY form; raw, fried, roasted, pickled, ringed, ANY style, but it sorta doesn't belong in this. But only just a little. It's in the bottom of the 'unappealing' range, for mine. The smoke is what hits you first, then the cypress, then earthiness. But WOW is all I can think at the moment. Wow this is interesting and totally intriguing

Rusak’s portrait of the Southern California desert starts at ground-level and moves upward. The frankincense, which Rusak tinctured himself, permeates the perfume from start to finish. Combined with labdanum and other resinous materials the frankincense smells dusty rather than woody or sappy. It’s rooted in an earthy accord that smells more of sand and stone than moist garden soil. The sense of scorched desert is palpable to the nose. Rusak says that the dry-soil effect is in large part due to a tincture of smoked, dried peppers that he created in his studio. The result is a sun-baked coziness that’s much more personal than the geosmin overdose sometimes used to give fragrances an earthy but often brittle vibe. To a large extent the smell of the SoCal desert is the scent of fire. The remnants of past brush fires seem to linger for years in the charred stumps of juniper and scrub oak. Papery sagebrush and dried piñon pine needles provide fragrant kindling for the loose fields of waxy, smoky creosote bushes that make the desert smell as if it could burst into flames at any moment. Io balances smokiness and dryness to reproduce the moody tension of desert air on a hot day, where the combination of bone-dry plants and burnt remnants are the before and after of a seemingly inevitable fire. The challenge of an incense perfume is the momentum of the frankincense itself. Placing it at the center of a perfume can make the perfume simply follow the dynamics of the material, no matter how hard the perfumer might try to steer it in other directions. Rusak bends frankincense to his own purposes just as he twists the expected geography of the material. Frankincense’s origins are in Eastern Africa and the southern Arabian Peninsula where the boswellia sacra tree grows. Perfumer Chris Rusak transplants his tree to the desert of Southern California where it reinvents itself in classic Californian fashion

With emphasis, profoundly disappointing. Almost every one of my favorite notes shows up here (labdanum, soil, incense, cypress) but there is an “indie-crudeness” that leaves me so cold at the end. In short, I wanted to like this but it completely falls apart into a phenolic green-bell-pepper bitter mess near the end and I think a good portion of the praise for this may be influenced by the indie exclusivity paradigm, or at best it may be coming from people not completely entrenched in the world of smoke-bomb niche fragrances . Smell Bent’s November does this better in almost every way, likewise with werewolf lumberjack, yet those are met with oddly meddling reviews, perhaps due to SB’s relatively humble pricing. This brand however, seems rather bold with their price point and admittedly, I’m not impressed. The same detergent-like smokiness that comes through in plenty of underwhelming smoke scents rears it’s head here, and it’s genuinely a Let down... in the context of the ad copy from this brand. Pound for pound your money is way better spent on Naomi Goodsir’s Bois D’ascece, or Hiram Green’s Hyde, or even Maack’s Coven for the soilier side of things (or the aforementioned smell Bents, or Roma’s Fumidus, at the very least they all trump this in complexity). It does Not feel good to critique an indie brand (especially one with such transparent consumer relations as this), but I found this crude and unimpressive in every way and I cannot lie about it. Regardless of my opinions, try it for yourself, but temper your expectations. 3/10

Chris will stop producing this entirely once it is sold out. It’s a masterpiece and speaks to the quality and dedication of the indie perfumer. It warms my soul when I smell this, and at the same time ignites images of fire, woods, and dirt. Makes me feel as if I’m sitting in a dry forest. I’m not particularly well versed at expressing the notes in a fragrance. As this is his first creation I will be grateful to have a bottle. There is much to appreciate about this fragrance and how Chris was able to recreate through his painstaking efforts his personal experience into an olfactory masterpiece. Definitely going to crush this in cooler weather. It was also intriguing in summer as the warm tone of the scent opened up on my skin.

I love this. It opens intensely mineralic (not a word but should be), slightly turpenic, like cold pebbles of frankincense. One of my favorite natural scents. It mellows out to something sunnier and slightly tangy like green vetiver. For fans of natural incense and pine, scents that are healing, comforting and never chemical, you can’t go wrong. I added to the “This perfume reminds me of” once I figured out what it was. It goes on with the sharpness of the leather and red cedar accord from H.O.M. The Red Room and dries down to the verdant, smokey tang of Smoke for the Soul. Atleast that’s what I get. 3 out of 5.

This is an intoxicating incense & forested earth scent that has great silliage and longevity for a natural perfume. I was hooked after my first wear. It is unique in it’s ability to feature incense as a central note while capturing and magnifying the earth and brush scent profiles with just enough sweetness to keep you intrigued. It is very easy to wear and elegant enough to play casual or dressed up.

A California chaparral hill with offshore winds, dirt, incense, and distant sequoias.