This latest group of Absolute Bliss imports covers what are largely very lightly dusted charcoal sticks. Two of these are florals in the vein of the old Shroff florals (most of these were in what was called the Masala Base line), one is another sandalwood variation and the first one I will start with is something of a merger of a number of different oils.
In fact some of you might remember being a kid and going to the local 7-11 or Circle K and making what used to be called a “suicide” where you’d get to the soda counter and just fill it with splashes of everything on display. While Bholenath is certain much more thoughtfully assembled, the number of different notes in it is almost bewildering, leaving one with a very exotic, complex and intense sort of palate. First of all there is some deep floral in it. Given everything else it’s mixed in I feel like I only get this in snatches and I’m reminded of carnation and pink rose and even lotus at times. If you’re familiar with Temple of Incense’s Ganesha then you might be familiar with the way super pink florals start to push towards Valentine’s Day heart candy. But it’s only part of the aroma. There’s a definitely woodiness to it that hints at sandalwood and oud as well, although I would highly doubt there’s real amounts of either in there. The woodiness never fully materializes when the floral is sitting on it. There are levels that are almost leathery, cologne like and then others that are more like cooking spices, dill, coriander or even something like celery salt. Stephen once sent me notes that included Zest/Irish Spring (which is particularly obvious as the first note in a stick), clove, tuberose, orange blossom and ginger blossom and yeah all of these show up as well, although with every single element in the incense it seems like it’s arm-locked with its neighbor. Bholenath is an almost kaleidoscopic display of notes and as such I am going to call it both utterly brilliant while at the same time cautioning that it might not be to everyone’s taste. But to me this sort of incense audacity is exactly what I want. There’s just nothing else like it in the entire catalog.
Exotic Sandal on the other hand is almost exactly what you’d expect. As every new sandalwood incense from the AB-TOI axis comes forward you do end up finding it difficult to separate the differences and my first burn of this made me feel like it just wasn’t really all that different from the AB Mysore Sandal or the Temple of Incense Sandalwood Extreme (or a bit less so the Pure Incense version or Happy Hari Absolute/King Sandal). The difference with the Exotic, perhaps more apparent with further use, is there’s some level of feeling that much of this exists with trickery. It’s a sandalwood with a lot of lemon in it and that combination of lemon and wood is actually very similar to furniture polish post use. While the incense does have a rough sandalwood profile there’s very little in the way of complexity or depth to it, all of which implies that there may not be even a drop of sandalwood essential oil in it anywhere. I believe Corey sells this for exactly the same price as the Mysore Sandal, which is a much more satisfying burn. So unless you are a huge fan of lemony sandalwoods, I would stick to the Mysore.
As I mentioned earlier, Shroff Channabasappa used to do what they called a Masala Base line. I think perhaps what was meant by this is the charcoal of a masala base because most of these incenses were dipped charcoals. The point of these was to portray a number of different floral incenses. Some of these florals also fell within their dry masala line. But many of these covered all sorts of flowers from mogra to lily to lilac to night rose and so on and so forth. The trouble with reviewing a lot of these incenses is where you might know some, a lot of native Indian flora are not as readily available in the west and it can be really tough to remember the oils, especially on many incenses I reviewed years and years ago, many of which I was not inclined to keep or restock. But both Navanth and Samadahan fall in this category. They are essentially floral oils on charcoal. The issue with a lot of incenses like this (and Stephen reminded me of this) is that charcoal is masked the least with a floral and there can be notes that are a bit like burning hair. I think once you sink into the incenses a bit that’s not as noticeable but it’s worth bringing up. Navanth reminds me of a few different florals but I am wondering mostly if it’s a Mogra incense of some sort, as that is often something of a classic Indian floral (and it also will bring up old head shop associations as well). I’m not sure how to describe a Mogra vis-à-vis a lot of different florals as they are so specific, but if this ended up being something like a lilac or another flower it wouldn’t shock me. I would guess it’s probably a synthetic of some sort but on its own it might have some level of character, but it’s hard to tell fully with the charcoal base blasting away.
Samdahan is really little different, it’s just a different floral oil. But in immediate comparison to Navanth it is a much pinker sort of smell, less exotic, perhaps more classically feminine. I think of carnations and roses with a scent like this and would rerefer you back up to my Ganesha connection up in the Bholenath paragraph. Strangely and perhaps due to the kind of floral it is, the charcoal doesn’t strike me as quite as conflicting with this one, although that doesn’t stop the bit of burning hair (to me this one even reminds me of the scent of a salon with someone sitting under a perm machine). But in the end, at least to my nose, it’s no less fatiguing as an incense as the Navanth. The issue, really, with both of these if in this fresh a form, you’re already getting this much charcoal interference then it’s going to lose the battle with age pretty fast. And both sticks also burn really long, so there is no recommending this unless the base of a charcoal stick doesn’t bother you. This isn’t so much an incense quality issue so much as a format issue; one of the reasons I really try to avoid reviewing pure charcoals is the complaint is often the same. If you can drown it out or maybe dust it up enough than you can mitigate some of the issues, mild and gentle floral oils just don’t really stand a chance.
As always, there are no current plans to actually put these incenses up at the Absolute Bliss website so it is highly recommended and encouraged to contact Corey directly using the methods at his contact page. My experience is that you can find what you want and ask him for a Paypal invoice. Please note that currently Absolute Bliss only ships to the US.
One of the sad parts about resuscitating ORS earlier this year was that the man who was practically my original partner in running the site passed away not long after I announced the site’s return. ORS might not exist if it wasn’t for Ross Urrere. Historically, this site started when I started posting about incense on my own blog. Ross joined in quite a bit and then there was some discussion about actually breaking off the incense part of the blog and creating something independent. Ross agreed to start writing, christened the site fairly quickly and off we went for many years. Ross also was interested in making his own incense and over the years went from afficionado to a revered creator in his own right. Ross was very generous and kept me fairly well supplied with samples of his incenses like Ocean of Night, Comfort, Souked Aloeswood or Sandalwood with Ambergris, all of which were brilliant. I am sad that I have completely run out of Ocean of Night even though, I was probably the benefactor of 4 or 5 vintages of it, but I do remember it fairly well (there is some truth that the inspiration to start up the site again came from revisiting a lot of vintage incenses that I actually ran out by the time I pressed go). Ocean of Night was a remarkable incense, almost sui generis from an incense standpoint, with an oakmoss presence that really set it apart from many of the heatables on the market. And I know I wasn’t the only fan of it, in fact I’ve never met anyone who didn’t like his incense work, a work I might add that was informed by studying perfume as well. In fact it is his friends in Mandy Aftel’s circle who inherited Ross’ recipes and I can certainly say for myself I look forward to the day that these return to availability.
This (final for now) installment of the most recent Pure Incense 2021 reviews ends up as something of a miscellaneous section, but includes a couple rose incenses. 
The first of these is the 
The rose is moved to a bit more of a back note with the 
The scent of the 
And finally, perhaps circling around to the Oud group in some way, is the 
As a quick recap, we have not only recently covered some of the high end Kyukyodos with reviews of Musashino and Sho Ran Koh, but with the incenses in the Hōun Gift Set we have covered just about all of the higher end imported Kyukyodo incenses except Kyukyodo’s Murasakino (there is one more even deluxe gift set but this is not imported to the US currently). Murasakino is actually probably the top of the aloeswood line other than the line’s Musashino kyara and like Sho Ran Koh it comes in two sizes, 
Murasakino is very much the bridge it appears to be from the kyara Musashino and into the Haru no Yama and Akikaze. It is a green color stick like the Musashino (and unlike the next two) but even though it still keeps some of the musk notes from the Musashino that bright and more evergreen touch of kyara has been replaced with what must be Kyukyodo’s next highest grade of aloeswood, the one that tends to permeate the next two incenses down. As discussed often in reviews here, Kyukyodo has a sort of creator stamp you find in most if not all of their incenses and this is perhaps the most impressive version of all of their incenses in that this has both a strong aloeswood note without getting at all into the more bitter or less adjusted features of the wood. Murasakino appears to be Japanese/kanji for “purple” and that actually makes a lot of sense when you start in on this incense. Purple sticks and purple cloud and similar ideas can be fairly common in the upper ranges of Japanese incense. You can actually think of this in some ways as a higher range Sho Ran Koh in style, but with the musk much more turned up and the mid level spices adjusted in a different direction. In fact one of the things I am noticing again burning new stock is just how much some of this middle has faded with age. The woods have largely survived but there’s a whole element of perfume in the center that really compliments them. It is an extremely beautiful incense, classy and noble.
In this third, most recent installment of Pure Incense reviews, I tried to lean a bit more in the sandalwood direction, although this group includes composite scents. There are, however, only three in this particular batch as it turned out one of the incenses I originally intended to review turned out not to be dried properly (it happens), but I will also mention Pure Incense took care of this issue nice and speedily. So for the remaining three…
The 
I’m always somewhat amused to see the word extreme applied to a sandalwood as it’s always struck me as one of the more gentle and mild woody aromas, but then again when you crank it up this much the word does start to apply. This 
The Kikujudo Kouboku Ginmi series appears to be relatively recently imported into the Japan Incense catalog, coming in at about the same time as the Kourindo line. Kikujudo is a company we haven’t seen a lot of incenses for, and certainly not any at all for traditional wood scents, so this is an interesting line up indeed and shows the company has great skill even with a much smaller line up. Kouboku Ginmi is essentially a series of sticks made from regionally sourced woods and they don’t appear to be embellished with much in the way of anything else, allowing you to experience each particular wood in as close to a pure state as you can get in a stick. The incenses are presented in utterly gorgeous, but perhaps oversized boxes, although they are also offered without boxes, which strikes me as a cool idea because if you essentially like anything enough to buy again you can keep the old box and just get a new roll. On the other hand, this has two of those hard to fit plastic slips, one that goes over the box and another that goes over the roll. The latter seems to go right on since it has no edges but the one for the box can be a bit frustrating. Anyway Kikijudo also offer a 
I’m asked every once in a while about sandalwood incenses, in fact often enough that we hope to eventually put something together that compares a lot of the existing sandalwoods to better highlight what’s out there, it will just take a bit of work. Where aloeswood can vary pretty widely in scent, sandalwoods are a lot closer together and even small variations can set one I like apart from one I’m not as fond of. But I really wanted to truly praise and highlight the 
The line’s most expensive incense, the 
Moving back to the sandalwoods, as well as the sampler pack (pictured) we have the lower grade 
One may remember some months ago our review of the 
Olfactory Rescue Service 
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