Midnight Forest (2009)
by Neil Morris Fragrances

Tthe opening of Midnight Forest smells like redwood bark with a mysterious musk and green myrtle. Long after applied Midnight Forest, I still smell the crisp green of galbanum and myrtle while the woods have faded somewhat and there remains an airy transparency that does smell of cool moist night air in the deep woods. I like this one considerably.

Neil Morris Midnight Forest

To those who read my reviews they know that I am a big fan of Neil Morris and his creations. Up until now the ones I have enjoyed have all been focused around floral accords and notes. I was very intrigued when I saw the note list for 2009's Midnight Forest; there was only one sort of floral note listed, that of nagarmotha which is a tuberous weed and a source of cypriol. Mr. Morris has been especially skilled in the use of overlapping floral notes to create lush, dense scents. Could he achieve the same without his "go to" notes or would this be a different kind of Neil Morris creation? The answer is perhaps both and neither. Midnight Forest is a beautiful overlap of woody notes which do create the density of his floral creations while not necessarily having the same intensity and thus creating the feeling of being the lightest of the Neil Morris scents I've tried, to date. The use of the same dark musk accord as used in both Midnight Flower and Midnight Sea does hearken back to previous compositions and it serves the same purpose in Midnight Forest that it does in those previous creations. The top of Midnight Forest starts with a strong galbanum which approaches the level of being almost too bitter and off-putting. Thankfully it never trips over the line and soon enough the promised forest begins to arrive as first a strong redwood note comes forth and in quick succession the nagarmotha, oak and myrtlewood create the olfactory forest. It is here that the slightly animalic and deep, dark musk plays around the edges much like the animals hovering just out of sight of the campfire. You get hints of them on the breeze but they never quite come close enough to the light to be seen. The base of this is a beautifully chosen resinous myrrh to evoke the incense-like smell of a pine forest at night. As with all of Mr. Morris' scents there is a great deal of longevity on me although this one does not seem to have the sillage of his floral creations. I have spent many nights camping in a forest of sentinel pines and Neil Morris has once again captured a scent memory whole and bottled it for me.