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Funerie is probably Nicholas Nilsson's most artistic composition. It's tempting to give it a bad review; it is so challenging that it is nigh unwearable. Its "morel mushroom" top note is stale and mushroomy and will likely repel people. And even when that burns off, what remains is so unilaterally plangent that only the peppiest optimist could experience it unscathed. Yet despite all of this, it impresses me. I think it achieves everything a good perfume should: it transports the wearer to a different time and place.
Nilsson suggests on Pineward's site that he intended to impart a gothically funereal vibe here, and one sniff sends my imagination to a foggy graveyard. I'm immersed in mushrooms, followed by the bitterness of synthetic isoquinolines, tinged in the periphery with pinewood and a very remote dried rose. Eventually the terpenes of desiccated pine needles and a weirdly camphorous quality permeates the air, evoking the sense of lying supine in a coffin, which is itself laying in a cracked and craggy mausoleum nestled somewhere in a patch of old pine woods. Cold air drifts through the broken stones, and its icy fingers weave through the coffin's splinters, carrying the essence of its wood and a bouquet of dead flowers on the lid above my chest.
Longevity here is nuclear: one or two sprays will last well over twelve hours. Funerie is a perfume that will intimidate and irritate most of the noses out there, especially those that are accustomed to "fresh" and "sweet" fragrances. But there is a phalanx of people who are into the whole Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab "Goth" aesthetic who will enjoy it. It's a perfume that reminds the wearer of his mortality, while conjuring a moribund fantasy of the afterlife. The fragrance is also legible and concise, with a technical precision not often found in contemporary perfumery. Very nice work.