Sadanne by Slumberhouse (2014)

A tough one to review. I wore this for one day and made a complete twist about this. From the very first sniff you clearly get some of the “signature” features of Slumberhouse’s scents, mostly the base Lobb seems to use for many fragrances: that sort of dark, medicinal boozy-ambery thickness, here with something animalic... but twisted in a complete different way than usual, pretty upsetting at first – and frankly hard to wear for the first minutes. Basically, Sadanne opens as a rotting lollipop: there’s all this fruity, jammy juiciness halfway raspberry bubblegums and cough syrups for children, juxtaposed to – or drowned in, I’d say – the “industrial Baroque” which characterizes Lobb’s world, the oily, deadly base rot which you get in most of his scents. The juxtaposition is daring and insolent, and quite messy at first: I admit I get a charming feel of creepiness, a sort of psychedelic, playfyl horrific decadence, like watching a Z-series splatter movie directed by John Waters. But at first I can’t really consider this something one would ever want to wear. There’s just... too much of everything – too sweet-juicish on one side, too rotting-dark on the other. Too powerful and cacophonic, which means almost repulsive. Nonetheless... with a little bit of patience, as hours pass Sadanne becomes more and more consistent, wearable, “harmonic” and compelling, reaching a really interesting substance.

It still remains a challenging clash between jamminess and gloominess, but all the notes and nuances kind of “melt” tuning on the same tone, reaching some sort of odd balance, like a chorus of freaks finally finding some harmony – a warm, medicinal, colourful shade of madness, completely nondescript, with a range of nuances from carnal to caramel. To me, a really innovative experiment which tries to rewrite the “fruity-jammy gourmand” in a filthy, gloomy light, a dirty “psychocandy” which I can’t not like – even only for the concept. And as I said, after a couple of hours it becomes even quite “easier”to wear, and frankly also rather pleasant and fun, more civilized than the opening phase – basically a sort of boozy-ambery civet topped with a bittersweet, sugary-fruity “dark” syrupy accord (think of Lutens for children). And a subtle powdery-musky undertone. And something smelling like blood. I would talk of... don’t know, “splatter pop Baroque”? Sadanne feels like an olfactive depiction of those tacky teen horror movies of the 1980s’ - Troma and friends. Just even more crazy – darker on one side, more childish on the other. Maybe hard to appreciate in its entirety, but really promising, intriguing, genuinely creative and different from the rest. Completely out of fashion and clichés. As Lobb often reformulates and fixes his scents, I am sure that a couple of fixes may make Sadanne a milestone for contemporary niche.

8,5/10