Baque
Slumberhouse (2012)

After trying the latest iteration, I can finally put BAQUE from Sulmberhouse in my top favorite tobacco-based compositions.

I have long abandoned the Slumberhouse train for many reasons. Mostly because I felt the house had lost its magic and the charisma that got me hooked many years ago. I only kept one perfume, KISTE, my favorite from the house. BAQUE, to me, always felt like a diamond in the rough. A tobacco perfume of great potential which was never fulfilled. The opening part and the heart were brilliant, only to fall apart in the base with a generic vanilla and ambergris combination, a major departure from the theme and the initial boozy-moist tobacco affair. It felt like Josh decided to create an amazing and unique tobacco-based perfume but got lazy in the process and left it unfinished. But now, justice has been done. A fellow enthusiast contacted me, asking if I was interested in acquiring a bottle of this new version of BAQUE. I have to admit, I was intrigued when I heard that a new version came up. Could it be? Final redemption?
I decided to try for myself.

After receiving it, I first applied it to the blotter. It reminded me of the older version immediately. So far so good, as I always loved the first half of this perfume. The same brilliant opening blast where dried fruits, whiskey, and moist tobacco leaves dance together to your sense's delight. Unique and captivating. I think the use of davana in this perfume is really smart as it coaxes all of that dried fruit, booziness, and edges of the tobacco accord, cementing them together. Such an amazing ingredient when properly used. In the mid, it still went as I remembered it, with the drunken fruits slowly backing down to allow more of the moist tobacco to come forth. Finally, it had reached the point where the previous version turned for the worst. But now, surprisingly, it continued in the direction it should have from the beginning. Yes, the vanilla and the ambergris are still there, yet I feel the ambergris is toned down, and what dominates now in the dry down for me is an amped-up woody quality as well as a prolonged leafiness and the tobacco accord that has been stretched to last forever until the perfume consumes completely on the skin. No more cracks in the flow of the composition, and finally, it feels like a finished product. The leafiness and the woodiness now overtake the vanilla-ambergris combo that follows just as a supporting player. I decided to wear it on the skin, hoping for the same experience as on the paper strip, yet still bracing for that uneventful dry-down I knew well and had me scrub it off mid-way. Only that this time, it never came. Pure delight from start to finish. I wore it over and over again with the same result. I am happy that BAQUE got redeemed at last, and I will be keeping this bottle even though I was skeptical at first. I can finally say that BAQUE is one of my favorite tobacco-based perfumes and most certainly one of the most unique. Moist tobacco leaves from start to finish, adorned with dried fruits drunken on whisky, and supported by vanilla, woods, and patchouli in the base. There is nothing quite like it out there.

IG:@memory.of.scents

My friend sold me around 10 mililiters of Baque, additionally I ordered a sample from Luckyscents.

Baque does similar tricks as others from the brand - creates memories in my head, in my brain. In that case however, these memories are not that closely related to my very own memories, which are a part of my childhood, a part of my life.

It opens up with a strong hay note that almost instantly reminded me of Sova. But it’s quite different from Sova, yet similar. It’s almost like Sova and Jeke decided to have a baby. So yes, pretty darn strong organic note is prominent on my skin. It changes into slightly boozy alcoholic note mixed with delicate herbaceous note and a little bit of tobacco - raw and tobacco smoke is also there. However, I must say, that compared with Baque Jeke (tell your pick with the formula, it doesn’t matter in that case) is a super smoky tobacco-cade bomb. The only one that might be considered as boozy as Baque - is a new Jeke 2022. After that there’s not that much going on as the scent keeps drying down to its ambery base.

Longevity is over 9 hours, sillage depends on the sprays used - and I’d say less is more with Baque.

Interesting. I’ll stick to my decant and samples, and see how much more it can surprise me (I believe it can, a lot).

A perfect autumn fragrance and one of my favorites from the line, highlighting a powerful blend of dried apricots, pipe tobacco, and bourbon whiskey, lain atop fall spices and fields of cut hay. It pulls together the best elements from each of Lobb's other tobacco fragrances, creating a perfectly balanced middle ground. This is the type of scent that makes me look forward to the darker, colder months at the tail-end of autumn, as winter fast approaches.

Baque opens with a blast of dark rum and coconut, but it's about to question your olfactory senses. The very brief opening of what appears to be a gourmand boozy type of fragrance, now become herbal, fruity, tobacco. It's a really hard to describe one in that stage.. it takes a few moment before the tobacco takes center stage. The herbal note would make you think it has a ton of basil or even oregano in it. I wanna say I smell some apricot, but it's probably not an oil, rather, an accord one must make, and replicating it seems impossible. I get a fuzzy skinned fruit kind of smell, but apricot, maybe not.

This fragrance will send your olfactory senses through twists and turns on a wild ride, and that's just in the opening. The middle settles more into a tobacco-centric frag, and the base gets a little boring with cedar and vanilla. Though we know, there are no base notes that have note already been done somewhere else, there are only some notes that can carry into the base, and vanilla and woods are definitely two. Thanks to the creator for not boring us with tonka and Iso E, or boring amber. I feel this one could have easily has an amber heavy base and still been good, but the combo of vanilla and cedar was a good choice, giving us something a little fresh, a little less utilized in perfumery.

Bravo, Slumberhouse. Although I am not a die hard fan of this house, I certainly respect and appreciate what the creator has done, something we don't see too often. I find the prices a bit too high for my personal taste, already having a huge collection, I wouldn't wear his fragrances often. Although I feel everyone on this website and reading needs to smell what this man can do. If these sold more at the Tauer price point ($100-$110 or so) a bottle, this house would be at stores everywhere, imho.

Genre: Woody Oriental

A sweet dried fruit and tobacco composition in what I consider to be the typical, dense, viscous Slumberhouse style. Not necessarily the most nuanced or distinctive scent in Josh Lobb's current lineup (those would be New Sibet and Norne, respectively), but appealing enough, especially on a cold, damp Pacific Northwest winter night.

This is another one in the oriental style that I associate with Opium Pour Homme edp. This smells like a great take on it. It has the feel of what I would expect, or hope for, from an independent, or niche, perfume company: a rich, complex, small-batch-production feel, more natural smelling than a mass-market fragrance.

The base isn't a problem, necessarily, but it becomes simplistically one-dimensional sweetness - benzoin, it smells like to me.