Medullary-ray

I read a review of this that described it as "Briney olives with a soft sour sandalwood” and I immediately sped down to my local perfumery to check it out because I HAD to know if it could really smell like briney olives. The answer is: yes, absolutely, this perfume opens up with a powerful blast of ripe, resinous, almost tarry black olive, which soon blends with spicy green fig leaf and herbal, gin-and-tonic juniper before easing into a veritable logpile of sun-beaten woods (guaicwood, birch, cedar) and a warm bed of dry, aromatic grasses (vetiver, papyrus, hay). The vibe is sweet, fresh, and languorous, braced with the front-loaded saltiness of the olive and fading into a smoky, creamy, leathery finish (myrrh, frankincense, sandalwood oil). It really feels like a whole story, perhaps the dreamy Tuscan late-afternoon suggested by the description: a frolic in the countryside; a roll in the hay; a few too many cocktails during a seaside rendezvous. I love the complexity of the salty, vegetal brine, the damp greenness, and earthy smokiness. It’s a dirty, rough-around-the-edges fragrance that’s full of layers, endlessly interesting. Like a bowl of particularly pungent olives, this isn’t for everyone or for all occasions, but it's way up my alley. I’m going to be wearing my sample a bunch and I could definitely imagine getting a bottle. No idea what the name is supposed to mean, though.

Upon first spray you are not going to experience your eyes rolling back into your head in ecstasy. It's not that type of scent- but give it time & space, and it may weave it's way into you and make a deep connection. Don't focus on it. Just wear it. Preferably more than once. 1st wear- I thought it was "nice". 2nd time- made a note that there is something really special here. 3rd wear, and I was falling pretty hard for it. 4th and final full wear available in my sample and I cannot imagine it being the last time to experience this meditation. It elicits poignant contemplation. How? I don't know- so I just bought the 30 ml so I can explore further. Euan has an uncanny ability to evoke emotion and awaken subconscious connections with scent. If you are in this hobby for something deeper than "pretty smells" don't sleep on Jorum.

I would truly love this one IF the unripe olive was not as amplified in the opening, although it does get more subtle after a while. There is a perfect balance between heavy resinous goodness, fresh aromatic aspect, and dry airy spices. I always find myself being attracted to the scent combination of papyrus, pomegranate leaf, orris root, and birch as altogether they give a rounded, almost soapy/clean green smell in an elegant way. Thus, even though you can put your finger on the castoreum note, Medullary-ray does not smell barnyardy or dirty to me. The green fig leaf, papyrus, and sandalwood become leathery, really present later. This scent picturises a breezy forest while mimicking the nature sounds and smells of mammals zipping behind the trees and into the branches. A very transportive and vivid scent.

smells inhuman, rather like a landscape or place; which is what i seem to chase at this point in my perfume journey... smelling inhuman. the myrrh, hay and juniper strongly stand out for me in the opening. like i’ve just opened up an ancient wooden box, gilded in gold, that contains thousand year old manuscripts. it’s unlike anything i’ve ever experienced before. i can absolutely smell valerian and olive aswel; two very polarizing notes that work so magically together in this. salty, acidic olive and sweaty-ass-crack-esque valerian complete this super interesting profile. savoury and complex, thick and rich, tender and warm. after being on my skin for 5ish hours, it settled into something much more peppery. warm and animalic. entirely genderless and absolutely gorgeous.

A masterpiece fragrance that you want to wear all day long in +8-15°C. The character of its scent reminded me of the smell if you burn and then extinguish willow bark from a branch, and when it becomes cold, it will have this aroma. The associations also captured the smell of a “cat’s paw.” But the main theme is a twig or olive bark (but not the olive itself), a noble woody scent, a salty-sweet tartness, valerian, and olive without the oil. It is balanced as much as possible.

Imagine combining a perfectly ripe cheese with a nectarine oozing juices and sweetness with just the right amount of acidity to emphasise the flavour. All this whilst enjoying a sparkling white wine on a glorious summer evening. Sweet, savoury and complex with a character all its own. It also works brilliantly when combined with other Jorum Studios creations. Highly recommended.

The old wooden door creaks open, an ominous figure cloaked in shadow stands within the ancient frame. The soft Grecian breeze now able to flow freely throughout the small home. The smell of the olive grove beneath the home wafting up with the breeze, the smell of not only the bitter and salty olives, but the wholistic smell of the tree: green, wood, and all. The figure says no words to you as he plops his sack to the ground as he enters in. Revealing himself to be a friend that is the old shaman of the village, the smell of medicinal papyrus, dusty hay, and smooth sandalwood radiate from the mans large robes. He reaches out his hand as he leans onto his large cedar staff, the clanking of metal trinkets he has tied to the staff barely audible as he asks once again for your help; a call to adventure literally standing in front of you. You give a slight smirk as you reach below an old carpet to reveal a trap door. The smell of unripe stored fruits and dusty wood shavings hitting your nose like a sucker punch. You grin as you lean down and grab 2 stacks covered in burlap. The first: a long silvered scimitar, decorated literally in the scars along the handle and guard and figuratively with the memories of many a scuffles you have found yourself in. As you begin to trace the blade with your fingers you snap yourself out of this nostalgic trance, and move to the next sack. A bundle of heavy cloths and fibers, the sawdust you smelled earlier coating the outside of them. Grabbing these items and your bag you turn to face your old friend, ready to see what the great north has in store for you two all these years later. I love not only the idea of this fragrance, but it plays in the middle between heavy and fresh, medicinal and dirty, familiar and mysterious. This is a fragrance that I can see anyone wearing at really any time. It tells a really beautiful and intricate story, and it's got me hooked. I really want to buy a full bottle of this but I already have so many I want to add before I should get around to this. I highly recommend trying this out though before purchasing, and with most if not all Jorum Studio's stuff as they are very realistic and odd.

For me, I got a herbal smell some dry woods, but also a semi-animalic tone (must be the castoreum mixing with the other notes) that immediately reminded me of Tiziana Terenzi Ursa. Ursa has patchouli whereas this one doesn't but the earthy woody herbal smell isn't a million miles away from that fragrance. The Jorum is more natural smelling though as I think is expected from this brand. I agree with below reviewer, animals moving around the trees and I guess as I've made the association with Ursa, more specifically bears in the woods. Just a note, this is the first full bottle I've bought from the house and the boxes with the sticker right over the tab holding the top on is very annoying to open! I ended up just swiping a knife across the top and cutting the folding tab off.

Pissy and briney opening, ancient dry down. It smells exactly like dry, luxuriated wood on a very hot summer’s day. I like it, but it’s almost more like an atmospheric experience rather than a perfume. If you wear it, you become this old, forgotten cabin that has been broiling in the hot weather, and if you enter it, it’s hot like a sauna. It creaks and smells like a fire hazard, but in the best way possible. Shelves with books, perhaps an opened book on a table near a broken window, which has caused the pages to get sun bleached. You let your fingers feel the open book’s pages — it’s warm to the touch. That’s what it smells like.

There is nothing like the scent of freshly sawed wood and Medullary-Ray is exactly that with some exotic lunch items waiting on the side as the wood curls fly about and the grinding of the metal and oily drills create a warmth that hangs in the air along with the sawdust. The dry down something dry and salty-sweet catches my nose like crumbling paper and the buttery orris so beautifully displayed in Trimerous. I can't say I have anything like Medullary-Ray in my scent wardrobe, but I will say this is a relaxing (almost meditative) fragrance to sit down with.

You've arrived at a Kafkaesque barbeque and you spritz on some Santal 33. While you're at the barbeque, you inexplicably get drawn in closer and closer to the huge roasting hog near the fire pit. After a few hours, you are inches away from the crackling fire and smoked ham, you can't escape, you pull up the collar of your sweater and breathe in the gamey smoke through the Santal 33 you applied earlier.

A fine, fluffy pile of sawdust from reclaimed redwood planks sitting in the sun, with black olives and overripe red fruits. There's something very sharp and on the edge of bitter at the opening, but within minutes the orris starts to shine and really soften the scent. Juniper also starts to breath some freshness into the mix, cooling it down. On my "like" scale of 1<5, this is a 2.

This smells like salty decaying loam, I love it. Has more of a green olive skin character than black, and the combination smells both dank and fresh simultaneously, like an ancient forest floor.

bitter and herbal, very masculine fragrance like a vintage men's cologne in teh drydown or a fougere without the lavender

I get a touch of a very fruity, oily, salty black olive in the opening, and then it goes smoky, woody, and funky. A medullary ray is a radial structure in a tree that carries water and nutrients, and this is indeed a Tree Scent, in what I’m starting to realize is Euan McColl’s woody smoky comfort zone. Medullary-Ray is “about” animalic skank where Neandertal Us was “about” cade and Arborist was “about” jatamansi, but they’re all dark, dry smoky woods in a hipster-rugged style. I find Medullary-Ray the roughest and most challenging of the bunch. Normally I like castoreum, but this is intensely animalic/sweaty and intensely timber-y at the same time. It’s not the elegantly sensual “fur coat” effect animalics often have in softer floral compositions; this is the whole damn animal. Masculine of center; not office appropriate. If I’m hesitating a little at the animalism, I expect scent-averse people will flat out say it stinks.

Fermented Earthy Wood🪵 This fragrance is pungent at first whiff due to the Valerian, but mellows into a sweeter wood after a few minutes✨️ It also has that resinous feel to the fragrance that keeps it from cloying onto the skin. Definitely a fragrance you need to air out at first💨 This is for someone who enjoys releasing their primal energy out in nature🦌 This is not for someone who works at an office, or else they will be fired😬 Zodiac Trio ⬆️Aquarius ☀️Virgo🌙Aries

A milky fig note against a bone dry smoke with accent of herbal valerian, could be a perfume around Aoud. Image of an aromatic garden in Autumn when you burn some dead wood. really good

Very pleasant, somewhat sweet and bright opening. Although after about a minute when it starts to dry down, it starts smelling more savory and herbal. Then I smell something reminiscent of a sandwich. More specifically. like a well seasoned Italian sub with oil and all the deli meat you can muster. I don't think I want to smell like a sandwich all day. Nice to sample, but I'll pass.

You're a bottle of hot white wine, smashed against a cobblestone walkway near a vegetable garden on someone's wedding night in spring. Medullary-ray by Jorum Studio.

Mold, barbecue, sweet sap, damp earth, dried animal feces, cough syrup, rosewater

This is somewhat haunting, almost foreboding. This evokes the corners of an interior space long uninhabited, Years of dust have settled on items long forgotten. There's an old encyclopedia, stacked on the floor, some issues of Smithsonian magazine and National Geographic. The walls are a knotty pine, and a certain dankness matches the deafening silence. This is the smell of an atrophied past, and its undecided if I would derive pleasure from wearing this. The combination of oily, smoky guaiacwood combined with the urgent pungency of valerian root reminds me of the aroma of linseed oil, peculiar as it pokes through the dust and must, as if the wooden furniture has been applied a fresh coat even as all else lays languishing. This is so fascinating, so confounding. I don't really have any other fragrance in my life that is so...spooky. I think I want to get to know this one better, and befriend it, as if it were some reclusive, eccentric artist living in this fractured, unattended space.

To me, I'm picking up on a mushroom element that penetrates from start to finish. It starts with an earthy-saltiness that I'm not a huge fan of, however, as it dries down, it turns into a pleasing floral pungent quality that's appealingly complex. I like layering this one with Clue Perfumery's Morel Map when I want to feel like a walking mushroom (that one adds a green mossiness that I love alongside the earth, roots, and salt here).

Quite a quirky, unique scent here... The dry balsam woods pair well with the herbal element, and there is a bit of a 'new furniture' wood smell, but it's not something I would usually wear. This is definitely something you'd need to try out before buying -- definitely not a safe blind buy! It's not offensive or stinky or anything like that... Not my thing, but certainly something worth trying out...

Resinous sweat falling onto sun baked wood. Reminds me of my time in Washington and the Pacific Northwest in summer. Sauntering through the woods and the scent of split branches perfectly suspended in a Sunbeam. Animalic and a bit oudy to my nose. The Valerian is beautiful, reminds me of empty Valerian root capsules a bit chalky but herbaceous. Might need a full bottle.

Opens with dark, briney olives, dries down to the same olives with a churchy incense. The smell of Tuscan mass and saints day feasts.

Druids, Rituals, stone, rosebush, swords, smoke over a flame, a circle cast....

Weird blend of good ingredients.