Pentachord White by Tauer, 2011

Fine white porcelain ought to smell like this. Uncannily it evokes many of the aspects we associate with the colour white dryness, blankness, purity, the loss of borders. Its like a white marshmallow that turns to sweet dust on the tongue, the flavour being secondary to that crumbling, dissolving moment. The iris note is desiccated but true, somehow losing much of the vegetal carrot feel but maintaining the powdery (dusty?) otherness of this precious ingredient. The vanilla is to the fore (on first spray this can give the impression of being all about the vanilla); but smoky, somewhat bleached, without the usual warmth. The violets are barely there, like those violet pastilles where the senses strain to perceive the flavour of the thing beyond the sugar. The only familiar aspect is the Tauer amber, here making a late, discreet entry, providing the shoulder that pushes the other elements to the front, without distracting. The whole gives the impression of something tightly conceived and executed but it lacks volume and can fade into the background. It also seems to me to be too firmly a mood scent (the kind Id use on a quiet evening on my own) to make the successful transition into functional wear.

An exercise in minimalism by Andy Tauer. Originally released exclusively for italian most influential niche shop in Rome called Campomarzio70 and now available in other selected boutiques around the world, the Pentachord line is composed using just 5 five ingredients for each fragrance. What came out is a mini-line of three juices that while surely minimalistic, are still pretty interesting due to their avant-garde facet. I'm actually not crazy about any of them but, at the same time, if you like experimental stuff, they're well worth checking out. White is a partially successful iris/vanilla concoction with an interesting twist provided by an extremely dry quality. The vanilla is juxtaposed to wormwood and orris root to create a sweet/salty composition enriched by a candied violet petal note. In this phase, White is powdery yet dry, sweet but not overly so with just a touch of ambergis adding some depth. Do I like it? Well, sort of. In my opinion it feels a tad crude to be full bottle worthy and the party get spolied by a sort of woody-ambery thing the turns the fragrance into a cloying bomb during the late drydown but, it surely deserves some attention if you like vanilla-centered frgrances and are sick and tired of the usual gourmandic take we're experiencing way too often.