Bruno Fazzolari + Antonio Gardoni = Cadavre Exquis

I've to say I've been a huge fan of this project since day #1. I've been patiently awaiting for the final result for quite some time now and I can only confirm that the first aspect that's clear when smelling Cadavre Exquis is that it exudes passion. Passion for perfume, passion for art, passion for sharing. The passion of people collaborating on something they love. You may either like or not what you smell but, to me, it's clear enough that the approach to perfumery that both Gardoni and Fazzolari are showing, comes directly from the way they process art in their minds as opposed to dealing with it as a mere "product".

The perfumers are both pretty well known to the most devoted perfumisti for releasing some of the most attention-grabber fragrances of the last five years or so. Gardoni, the man behind italian Bogue Profumo, enriched the perfume world with gems that now need very little introduction such as MAAI, Cologne Reloaded and, lately, the widely acclaimed Aeon 001 while Fazzolari's Lampblack and Room 237 have immediately jumped up there amongst my all-time favorites in contemporary perfumery. They gathered together to give birth to this trans-atlantic project that is Cadavre Exquis.

The fragrance is the result of a four-hands collaboration based on moulds, samples, paintings / drawings exchanges with only one theme framing the whole project: gourmand. As stated on the Fazzolari's website, The term cadavre exquis refers to the game originated by the surrealist artists of the 1920s. In the game, players collectively assemble words or images to create a poem or drawing, with each player making a contribution of his own while totally unaware of the others’. The result is unpredictable and always surprising. The name itself comes from one of the first assembled sentences as reported by surrealist André Breton: “Le cadavre exquis boira le vin nouveau.” (“The exquisite corpse shall drink the new wine.”)

So, the fragrance is supposedly a gourmand but, with much of my joy, there's really not much edible stuff about it. It reads mainly like a cocoa-patch with a camphorous quality up-top and a dark, woody-spicy base with smooth animalic facets. Vanilla does its part too though but without driving the fragrance towards overly sweet territories. In fact, I would describe CE as quite dry in the end. I also get distant florals providing nice refinements. Given the composition process, it's also supposedly a monster, kind of a frankensiein type of composition in which isolated parts were added to the main body almost randomly but, again, the final result feels incredibly coherent and consistent that the chemistry between these two guys seems to have worked pretty darned well.

Don't get me wrong now, Cadavre Exquis is not exactly what I would describe as an "easy" fragrance but it's also far from representing the monster one would expect from the descriptions seen around. Yes, it's bold (but without being overpowering), dark, sometimes even grotesque but in the best possible ways. It has the typical roughness of most indie / artisanal products but it's also very clear that this roughness is something inherent to the style of the perfumers involved. Something completely unrelated to the skills of either. Something that's part of a treasured personal aesthetic that belongs to style and self-expression. Something I would probably compare to the artistic choice of a band to express via a rougher sound as opposed to the super-polished / auto-tuned production of mainstream pop. In other words, a visceral roughness that comes directly from passion.

I could go on and on with a more detailed description of the fragrance itself but I strongly believe any serious perfume lover should at least experience this little jewel that transcends perfumery to bring us back the love for the things we do.

Long live to two of the most interesting and kindest people to populate the current fragrance game.

Rating: no need to rate this. Maximum Support.

Note: Just because I realized I sounded like I was actually blowing these dudes, let me add I'm not particularly fond of the presentation of Cadavre Exquis that looks a bit too much like a post-Editions De Parfums Frederic Malle / stock-bottle type of thing. Just a minor aesthetic issue, mind me.

Guest Reviewer Of The Day: Way Off Scenter

A landscape architect and garden writer by trade, Way Off Scenter is a long-established and prolific reviewer of fragrances for the Basenotes web site, first as “Vibert” and then as “Off Scenter.” He has been reviewing under his current moniker since returning from a two-year’s absence at Basenotes. Click here for more reviews by Way Off Scenter.

MAAI: A Remembrance of Things Past

MAAI is an enormous, unapologetic animalic chypre scent composed in a style that hearkens back to the tropes of post-WWII perfumery. Perfumers like Edmond Roudnitska, Germaine Cellier, and Ernest Daltroff used to compose scents of this ilk for such firms as Hermès, Piguet, and Caron. Now MAAI stands as a glorious anomaly and a tribute to an art of classical perfumery that seems at times to be languishing.

Imagine, if you will, Cellier’s Fracas bedding down with Opium and Serge Lutens’s Muscs Koublaï Khan on a mattress filled with oakmoss (real, I’m told!) and you’ll have some sense of MAAI’s overall structure. The composition feels like three massive blocks laid down over a chypre foundation. First to emerge is a pungent animalic component (the Muscs Koublaï Khan part), rife with civet and castoreum, and not all that far removed from the animalic accords in Roudnitska’s original Madame Rochas or Daltroff’s vintage Narcisse Noir. Next up is a sensuous tuberose-centered white flower accord, smoother and quieter than Fracas, but still decadently creamy and substantial. Last out of the starting gate is an intensely spicy amber oriental, seasoned with cinnamon, cardamom, bergamot, and plenty of labdanum. (Opium, anybody?) The two last-mentioned notes blend with the potent oakmoss to establish MAAI’s profoundly rich chypre accord. The result is simply magnificent, and seems certain to cruise to the head of my “Best Release of 2014” list. (Not that there’s much competition.)

Once the elaborate tripartite structure is established, the components slowly rotate through olfactory space, yielding an ever-shifting sequence fragrance perspectives. Projection and sillage are both copious, especially for the first four to six hours of wear. After that, MAAI very slowly distills itself down to a marvelously warm and decadent labdanum and oakmoss skin scent, in a drydown that remains detectable for at least a day after application. Though the description might put some men off – what with that tuberose – MAAI strikes me as a thoroughly unisex composition. In fact, my wife says she has a hard time imagining it on a woman. At any rate, I heartily recommend that anyone with a serious interest in fragrance sample this great big, indulgent and uncompromising chypre. They just don’t make ‘em like this anymore!

Rating: a shocking 9.5-10/10