Persolaise Review: Apsu from Ulrich Lang (2016)

The soundbites
If Apsu were a colour, it would be jungle green.
If it were a texture, it would be the flesh of a honeydew melon.
If it were a sound, it would be air bubbling up through water.

The review
In objective terms, Ulrich Lang‘s new Apsu – named after the Babylonian proto-god of the “watery depths beneath the earth” – is certainly green. But its greenness is of a curious, perplexing character, falling neither into the figurative, ‘cut grass’ camp nor into the galbanum-heavy territory redolent of peas and peppers. Instead, its viridian nature is aqueous, albeit not in the ozonic, seaweedy, overly-synthetic manner that blights countless other so-called ‘marine’ scents. Here, the impressionistic spring bubbling across the top notes is genuinely fresh, as though it’s just flowed through a travel-brochure-lake, where the reeds sway in time to the breeze and the heat never rises above 25 Celsius. Key to this effect is what I read as a banana facet (a combo of the jasmine and water lily listed on the official notes?) as well as a goosebump-inducing sprinkling of pepper, both of which bring vim and velocity to what might otherwise have been a pleasantly forgettable piece of work. Picture a tanned diver enjoying a snorkel in tropical waters and you’ll get a sense of this perfume’s dynamic. Confident and intriguing, Apsu adds a novel twist to the current mini-revival of 70s-style green scents. Do check it out.

[Review based on a sample of eau de toilette provided by Ulrich Lang in 2016.]

Persolaise