Beaufort London Absent Presence t ©
There’s a subtlety and a reserve to Beaufort London Absent Presence that seems baffling to followers of the brand. After making their name with the Hell Or High-Water collection, the brand’s second Revenants collection has explored a handful of more pensive concepts over its releases since. Where 2015’s Vi Et Armis is a swirling torrent of ideas (tea, opium, whisky, and smoke) served at a super high volume. A perfume like 2017’s Iron Duke is a tobacco-tinged leather that serves melodrama in a much closer, quieter way; eschewing the sheer smoky impact of some of those early works for something more pondered.
Leo Crabtree owner of Beaufort London and drummer for The Prodigy, photo courtesy of the brand
And much like Iron Duke, Beaufort Absent Presence is calmer; it’s more of an acoustic number included on the hard rock album of Beaufort’s catalogue to offer respite from the intensity of the sound around it. As tenuous as that musical metaphor is, it does feel valid because somehow Absent Presence manages to just hang all its dusty sandalwood mass in the air, as if it were a mood piece, written with minimal elements, that purposely uses a cloak of reverb to extend and intentionally unnerve. It’s rather odd that there’s no real introductory splurge of top notes to it. It simply isn’t there before you spray it and then, when you do, it is; and this fully formed cloud of peppery, leathery cedarwood with hints of old school chocolate-lime sweets that seems to loom over you.
Sir Phillip Sidney © Creative Commons
It’s all very apt considering that the perfume is inspired by the work of the Elizabethan poet Sir Philip Sidney, in particular a passage from Astrophel & Stella where he describes a haunting:
‘Now I, wit-beaten long by hardest fate,
So dull am, that I cannot look into
The ground of this fierce love and lovely hate,
Then some good body tell me how I do,
Whose presence absence, absent presence is;
Blesst in my curse, and cursed in my bliss.’
Personally, as of yet, I’ve never seen a spectre or been in the presence of a ghoulish apparition so I infer Sidney’s passage as more being haunted by my own memories of mistakes that still sit constant and heavy on the heart. In such a mental fugue, any degree of happiness is tainted and soured by a pang of loss or regret and everything just feels heavy and dulled and endless and opaque; and there’s certainly part of perfumer Julie Dunkley’s composition that sits on the nose like a similarly oppressive weight. In what feels like a simple structure it’s the body of the woods that are so tenacious and thick. The leather accord serves up its slightly astringent, cacao facets and there’s this smoke infused, stony, crumbling mortar aroma that manages to conjure images of architecture past.
There are elements I believe I have smelled before in previous offerings (namely Iron Duke and Acrasia) but in Absent Presence these hauntological ideas have been distilled into a full length offering that feels intentionally burdensome. It’s a unique perfume that is large and kind of dank at times. It’s hard to ignore and in that the brand’s eternal desire to corrupt and disrupt the perfumer’s palette is here, in a scent that envelops and demands attention in a way that’s perhaps more spiritually unsettling than the all the olfactive warfare of those early landmark releases.
Notes: bergamot, galbanum, pepper, jasmine, violet, leather, sandalwood, musk, amber, cedarwood
Disclaimer: A sample of Beaufort’s Absent Presence was provided by the brand.
–Oli Marlow, Contributor
Beaufort London Absent Presence @Indigo Perfumery website
Thanks to the generosity of Indigo Perfumery we have a 50 ml bottle of Absent Presence (30 percent parfum) available for one registered reader in the US only. You must register or your entry will not count. To be eligible, please leave a comment saying what sparks your interest based on Oli’s review. Have you ever experienced a haunting? Draw closes 7/23/2024
Indigo Perfumery carries a great selection of Beaufort London here
Please read Lauryn’s Review of Rake and Ruin, Iron Duke, Fathom V and 1805 by The Nosey Artist aka Christopher Grate and Vi et Armis, a collaboration between Michelyn and Christopher.
Follow us on Instagram: @cafleurebonofficial @olimarlowsmells @indigoperfumery @beaufortlondon
This is our Privacy Policy
We announce the winners only on our site and on our Facebook page, so like Çafleurebon and use our blog feed… or your dream prize will be just spilled perfume
Like our Facebook page: Çafleurebon and use our blog feed for new updates and articles