Wild Hunt (2007)
by CB I Hate Perfume

"Wild Hunt" is described on the CD I Hate Perfume website as:
"the scent of an ancient forest in the heat of a summer afternoon. It is a blend of Torn Leaves, Crushed Twigs, Flowing Sap, Fallen Branches, Old Leaves, Green Moss, Fir, Pine and Tiny Mushrooms."

The opening fragrance is indeed earthy and woody. It is followed by the scent of fir and pine. Next i get hints of spices, although i can't identify which. After this come rich seductive flowers, not strong, but somewhat heady, while the spice and woods remain. I hoped for something earthier, but i like the blend of flowers and woods.

After this scent dries down it is loamy and rich with a sweet undertone like a meadow after a spring shower. It is absolutely brilliant!

However, as you spray it on, before it dries, the smell is gag-inducing. It smells like long-buried, rotten potatoes that have been unearthed by crazed zombies - absolutely horrible...

Since it is water based, the good part of the scent doesn't last long. The pain and suffering of the 1st notes are not worth the hour of wear time.

I enjoy this one. Like Black March, it is a very natural evocation of a wet, earthy, woodsy scene that is uncanny in its analogy. It is also similar in that you may think twice about using something this close to the dirt as a skin scent--though Wild Hunt is maybe more amenable than greenish Black March in that respect.

Where Black March puts your nose up against a wet mossy log, Wild Hunt finds you on the forest floor, with pine needles, leaves, sweet woodiness and smoky mushroom. To me it stays more linear than Black March. Neither are particularly long-lasting to me, but hot damn, how cool that someone is going for this level of verisimilitude.

Let me describe you the smell. You put flowers into a vase and forget to change their water several days. Yes if you are lucky to notice before roots decay and that awful putrid smell comes on, (yes one or two days before it) the vase water smells like that. I sometimes like this odour of vase, sometimes not. But enjoying to wear it needs a lot of more amendment in my taste i think.
Also keeping the fragrance in water instead of alcohol makes it very natural. So does the fragrance content. So natural that it does not resemble a perfume anyway. This makes me understand the name. Designer really hates the things we call perfume today. So he is trying to make a completely new thing or at least a big revolution in perfumery. Maybe we will get used to his extraordinary way, may be today these perfumes born from the hatred of perfume are very avant-garde, and may be these perfumes will find a fan group just in time (as big as atonal music does.) Time will show...

I get very little of the green scents. To me it smells very simply of the rich spongy soil on the forest floor. Dirt and decaying leaves. This is a wonderful comforting smell when your actually in the woods. It doesn't make sense as a perfume, but i kept going back to it to prove to myself i wasnt crazy, that someone actually bottled the smell of earth. I think ill keep my little decant around to sniff in the dead of winter when im craving the outdoors, but i don't see myself ever wearing it. It would be great for halloween to accompany a costume though. provided you were dressed as something subterranean.

Wild Hunt is very intoxicating! Imagine yourself in a dense forest with tall trees, pine, moss and fresh bitter leaves all around you soaked in sun. It is piny throughout, but the strength of pine is tamed by the presence of moss and something that smells like very aromatic leaves.