The Seekim

[Invidiana]

 

 

THE SEEKIM

Cacao absolute, hay, black pepper, patchouli, and incense ash.

 

This is unusually yummy. You'd think these notes would be discordant, but everything just ties in so well. The cacao absolute and patchouli are the main players on my skin, both thick and deep and and lovely. It's like that Schwarzer Mond-type patchouli covered in bittersweet chocolate. Supporting this dusky deliciousness is just a hint of black pepper which gives it a bit of extra zing but doesn't go so far to be a piercing sneezeworthy pepper like Ebeneezer Scrooge. They hay note adds a certain cozy autumnal warmth which actually blends very smoothly with the other elements, and there is also some sweet resiny incense at the finish. I almost didn't chance this one because of the pepper, but so glad I did!

[malibusunny]

I will be back to edit this once I have a proper skin test, but straight from the bottle, I love this. It is dirty hippie barn sex rolled in chocolate. There is a touch of sweetness that I didn't expect, since I thought the cocoa was going to be bitter. From the bottle, I don't get pepper at all, but that usually comes out on my skin rather than in the bottle.

 

Mine separated dramatically in the bottle, just like 13. Be sure that you roll this one before testing!

[forspecial_plate]

Uh-oh.....sorry Wulric but you've got some competition! Don't be too jealous. : )

 

When I wear this, it starts out weird and chemical and synthetic-smelling, and I didn't think I liked it at first. But then the hay and ash work together to create this ghostly, ethereal feeling that is silvery and shimmery, and this is what I love. I usually don't like cocoa or cacao that much, but it fits perfectly with this particular weird combination of notes.

 

I don't remember anything else like this.....it brings to mind Wulric, but I think Wulric is more warm and snuggly (but still kind of wild), whereas The Seekim is light and ghostly. Eerie. The patchouli isn't heavy, but see, I love patchouli so it makes sense that it wouldn't stand out to me. The shimmery quality does remind me of Sluagh a little bit, just the tone of the scent, but I don't think they have any notes in common.

 

[As a side note, I was hoping this would be something like Serge Lutens' Chergui, but it's actually more like Chene, another shimmery ashy scent....and my favorite non-bpal perfume]

 

The Seekim is light on me so I think I might need 2 bottles, so I can wear as much as I want!

[HerbGirl]

Not sure why this is happening (or how this is possible), but after rolling the bottle (holy cocoa bathman!) and applying I smell lemon tea tree.

This should not smell like Lemon anything...and I don't like the smell of tea tree, so I'm hoping my sniffer is way messed up from being sick and that I will get the lovely hay and patchouli that I'm itching for... I will revise my review if this changes. Fingers crossed...

 

ETA: Yes, wet this was Lemon Tea Tree or Myrtle...very strange. Dry, my boyfriend kept saying it smelled like a cedar chest (?) and it did have a woodsy vibe to it. Hmmm...definitely deserves another proper test, and I'm hoping my opinion of it will change.

Edited October 9, 2011 by Herb Girl

[TrailerTrashPrincess]

even being sure that the oil was well-mixed....

somehow this turns into wood cleaning polish on me. or, rather, like lemon-scented wood cleaning foam, and a hint of nice wood underneath.

[Poenari]

Cocoa, ashy but with a soapy undertone that is giving it that furniture polish scent that others have described. Disappointed that it doesn't work for me, but glad I got a decant to try it out!

[tkannon]

I tried this one on a whim but so far I am glad I did. I put it on and thought I was done for. Patchouli and I are only friends in passing and this was almost straight single note patch. However, as it dried it rounded out and I am now going to give this a full day's test. I think this will age amazingly as well as the patch smooths out even more. I would love to get more cocoa in this but so far we are off to a good start!

[Ilex]

Initially, it was a blast of cocoa. No patch. Boo! on that, I wanted a cocoa patch scent.

 

The dry down is the furniture polish smell others are getting. Lemon Pledge. What is up with that? I think there is frankincense in that incense ash, as that sometimes goes cleanser on me. And the hay is not helping, I don't think, as its kind of making the polish sicky sweet smelling. Not getting any black pepper, and where did the cocoa go? Poof! The cocoa was there so briefly and is utterly gone now. If the cocoa had stuck around this might be a keeper, as it'd have rounded out the other notes. And still no patch.

 

This isn't what I was hoping for. I'm going to console myself with a slather of #occupywallstreet now.

[a_llb]

In vial: Patchy cocoa.

Wet: It's like coal ashes and tobacco. Very dirty, very intense on me.

Dry: Getting a sort of barnyard vibe now, sweet and earthy. Almost leathery, even! This is a cowboy scent if I ever smelled one.

 

Verdict: I didn't know what to expect from the Seekim. I get tobacco & leather from it, but I think that's just how my nose interprets cocoa + ashes + patchouli. To me it's a very manly blend, so I won't be keeping it.

[blu°]

I think this is my favourite of the Weenies so far. Mind you, only did a short test after work today, and reapplied just now, so my opinion might still change...

 

Anyway, it's cocoa and some dusty woodsy smell that might actually be the patchouli, and then something... something bright and a little sharp that gives it an edge. I think that would be the pepper. Weirdly, it lends a more feminine quality to the dusty cocoa-patch mix IMO. Ditto for the hay, which I don't get right now directly after application, but remember from earlier today. While the pepper adds some sparkle and zing, serving as a highlighter here, the hay smoothes out the edges and softens the scent, taking away some of the harshness of the other notes. I'm a bit worried about the hay maybe getting on my nerves later on. It's a note I don't usually like to smell on and around me for a long time, but so far it's ok in here. If I keep liking this so much after some more tests, I might have to look for a way to make some bottle money.

[Monday]

I smell lemon...? There isn't even any lemon listed. It's the same detergent lemon scent that I get from Lemon Scented Sticky Bat, in here though it's seriously nauseating. There is a tiny bit of cocoa and no patchouli. I really wanted to like this one (the globs of cocoa in the vial make it a nice lava lamp oil) but I need to scrub this off before the headache hits.

[sharkdiver]

I was so afraid I was going to hate this one, after I had bought a bottle of this unsniffed just based on the reviews from others....

 

 

I am happy to say, I LOVE the Seekim!

 

I can definitely see where people are getting the lemon/furniture polish vibe from, as I can detect that a little in the bottle, and again in the first minute or so while it goes on wet. Once it begins to dry, I must have magic skin chemistry, because it dries to this beautiful blend of a soft patchouli, chocolate, and hay. It also has a muskiness to it, that my skin really likes, and it amps this. I was really surprised how much I Love the Seekim, and on me, it's not a masculine scent at all!

 

SO glad I bought I big bottle!

Edited November 9, 2011 by sharkdiver

[Juushika]

In the vial: Chocolate and vetiver. The cocoa absolute is thick, dark, and almost impossible to reintegrate into the oil.

 

On me: A hit of chocolate on the skin, which burns off to leave behind a beautiful mellow darkness—patchouli and ash (which leans towards full-on smoke as the scent wears) with a touch of warmth from the hay and pepper. The cocoa gives some lingering dark color and a bit of sweetness, with occasional appearances as an actual chocolate note, Boomslang-dark and beautiful—a pleasant surprise, as cocoa absolute usually vanishes on my skin. The Seekim already feels aged: it's warm and dark, smooth as smoke with slight powdery ashiness and a pepper kick, and beautiful beyond words. Scent-color is a deep smoked brown. Throw is moderate low, wear length is fairly long.

 

Verdict: I'm in love. Bless that I get nothing of the lemon others report, because The Seekim is a dream come true on my skin. The notes meld together into a rich dark warmth, more distinctly cocoa than I was expecting but far from foody. I may have to spring for a full bottle, because I think this will age like a dream—and I want to find out.

Edited November 7, 2011 by Juushika

[sunshinedaisybliss]

I love the little globule of chocolate goodness sitting at the bottom of my decant. I also love the word 'globule'.. so even if I hated The Seekim, I would still be grateful that I got a decant of it because it gave me an excuse to say globule.

 

I was expecting something a bit more dark and intense from this - or should I say hoping for, rather than expecting? Yeah.. I was hoping this would be a dark and dirty mix. When I read this from a few posts up:

 

It is dirty hippie barn sex rolled in chocolate.

I had to chuckle, because it is kinda like that, except for me it's more like clean yuppie barn sex rolled in chocolate. Yuppies have those very clean barns ya know, filled with matching suites of storage cabinets from IKEA and clean hay stacked neatly in orderly rows. So I wanted dirty hippie barn sex, but I got clean yuppie barn sex.

 

Anyways - all that aside, I really love The Seekim. Once again I find myself wishing I had a Note Removal Machine^TM so that I could take out the hay, because I think that's the note responsible for the 'clean' feel that it has. I also find that the black pepper adds a top layer of brightness to the mix that kinda spoils it a bit, and seems at odds with the cacoa and patchouli. Thankfully, no lemon for me here. I'm not really getting any sense of the incense ash, I do know what incense ash smells like - it's not really smokey as such, it's more a dusky powder - but I'm not getting it in here. And this has to be one of the lightest, least in-your-face patchouli blends that I've ever tried.. the patchouli here is soft.

 

I do think that this is one of those BPALs that should be tested from a 5ml bottle, rather than a decant, because oils that contain globules (YAY - I got to say it one more time!!) don't always decant well, and I always wonder whether I've got an even mix of things in my vial. So although The Seekim has turned out to be much less dark and mean than I hoped he would, I might just have to buy a bottle anyway

[ow1goddess]

I didn't have any notion of what this would smell like, but I really like it! Wet I get a lot of dry (non-milky) cocoa with a nice base of sweet incense- I get a little kick of pepper but it melds with the incense, and a bit of warm dustyness from the hay. The dry-down remains nice but goes more and more to a sweet, fuzzy patchouli. It reminds me of WILF and Hellhound on my Trail. I only tried this one because I lucked into someone selling a big pile of testers, because I would not have bought this otherwise, but now I might need a bottle! I also like that it's unusual- it reminds me of other things, but it's distinctive and different from everything else I have.

[Caper]

so i just wore this one all day and decided it's a great time to review.

 

imp: chocolate, hay, and a little bit of darkness. i'm kind of intimidated.

 

wet: this one SEPARATES! so i had to really roll it and tilt it from side to side gently. wet i got a nice chocolate and patchouli blend but the oil is so hard to mix that i had to tip the edge of the imp against my arm because the wand just wouldn't hold any oil except for the light blond one at the top. i could see the cocoa absolute on my arm mixed with the light blond oil.

 

dry: so freakin' amazingly good. i can't really explain how much i love this one. it dries down to a soft warm chocolate patchouli that sticks pretty close to my skin but last a long time.

 

 

my skin seems to be eating scents lately so i'm going to have to retry in a bit because i don't remember this the first time.

 

this is definitely a bottle. maybe with a back up?

[Dark Alice]

I don't know what this is but there is no chocolate in this. There is the scent of fresh green hay with hints of incense. Ashy incense. But no cacao at all...at least while wet. Dry there is the barest hints of chocolate, something lemony, with hay. This is definitely not me. But I am glad I got a chance to try it.

[Antoinette]

I have to really roll the imp around to get the cocoa mixed. Then it's cocoa and incense ash ash ashiness on my skin. The first time I wore this I didn't get the cocoa mixed in good enough and only got ash. I'll definitely keep my decant because it is interesting. The incense in it is quite pretty.

[edenssixthday]

The Seekim - Oh wow, I didn't expect to like this at all -- the only note I thought *may* work was the patchouli. But it's amazing on me! It's a woody, dry cocoa scent. The cocoa, patchouli and hay are the strongest notes and they work together so beautifully. The cocoa isn't sweet, but very dark and heavy. I really can't describe how awesome this scent is. It's one of the very few chocolate/cocoa scents I've been able to wear, and it may be my favorite. It lasts for a good long while, too. I put it on in the morning, and and as I was driving home from work at night, I could still smell it... barely, but it was there.

[Little Bird]

Arcana makes a scent called 'Soot' that's chocolate, black pepper, patchouli, vanilla, and incensey notes. I looove that one, and was hoping that The Seekim would be similar with the list of similar notes. Unfortunately, the hay in The Seekim seems to take over and this smells a lot like Hay Moon on me (lemony wood polish, sunny wood, and dry grass). I like Hay Moon, but I don't really like that hay note mixed with a whiff of chocolate. And I adore black pepper and patchouli, but don't smell much of them here

[zankoku_zen]

Patchy cocoa and hay. With hints of black pepper.

 

Spicy, dark, dirty.

[milo]

Wet, very herby medicinal. Dry, the hay is dominant here, followed closely by the pepper and a touch of patch. I did smell the cocoa early on, but it is non existent now. I love the smell of hay, and the pepper seems to balance it out. Still, I wish it was more chocolate. I'm going to retest my sniffie later and see if I can get that darn globule of cocoa to come out, as I do like this.

[patina]

Cacao, black pepper, and...furniture polish? The hay note is almost lemony. I can pick up a faint hint of inscence.

 

As it is drying, I pick up whiffs of hay in the air, so the furniture polish only happens when I sniff close up. This is seriously reminding me of Black Temple Burlesque without the tobacco.

 

Whoever said "dirty hippie" was right. This scent just feels shaggy, like rolling around in hay. Maybe I'm a bit weird, but it seems melancholy to me too somehow. Maybe it's the prickliness of the pepper, maybe it's the fact that I read the poem. I don't think I'm being unduly influenced by the poem, but this does seem like a scent that describes someone searching for something they may never find.

 

I think I'll skip this one as I have another dark cocoa scent that I like better.

Edited November 17, 2011 by patina

[impolight]

:::The Seekim:::

 

 

The Seekim

May seek

What he wants

When he knows

What

He aimlessly

Seeks,

But

Any old Quest

Is followed with Zest,

And keeps him

Demented

For weeks.

The Seekim will know

What

He lacks

When he

Finds that he lacks

What he knows;

But taking stock

Would give him a

Shock

And add

To the weight of

His woes.

And if

He should guess

What

He fears

He’d fear

Any further to guess,

And pull down

The blind

In front

Of his mind;

To cover

His

Mental distress

The Seekim

Will

Slacken hispace

When he learns it is silly

To fuss

He’ll follow

His toes

Where every toe

Goes;

He seems

To be somewhat like

Us.

(Sidney H. Sime MCMXXIII A.D.)

 

Without a doubt The Seekim is one of the best things to explode a nose (as the saying goes). A bulldoze of throws! Where throes of whoah’s flows! Why follow toes where every toe goes when BPAL shows your soul grows when your nose glows? *twitch*

The Seekim has rocketed its way to the loftier, uppermost tiers of the BPAL formula favourites.

5 ml. of this has been hibernating in a scallywag-themed millinginline receptacle...

http://www.etsy.com/shop/millinginline

waiting for today since mid-October (First, a return to The States from London was in order). Was it ever worth the wait!

From the Bottle: An extraordinary blending of the Cocoa and the Hay creates a very exotic effect that would be like a fantasy version of Amber… Amber worn by some advanced alien race whose reflective skins secrete a neurotoxin capable of suspending you in a state of throw-your-hip-out climax for 30 minutes. Super-duper, Starship Trooper-rad, bad, glad you’re mad! Oof!

Wait. There’s more…

The Incense Ash is pretty brucking filliant. Indubitably apt!

Of course, there are the virgin Incense wands with their overblown razzmatazz for your hooter.

The smoke gets the point across, but usually the magic happens at nanosecond intervals just as you step over a threshold, but before the cloy sets in.

The Ash is where the goodies lurk. No hollow promises here. No apologies for lack of staying power. This is the real deal.

No Patchouli is detectable yet. Considering that Patchouli isn’t well known for being retiring or timorous, one can’t help but wonder when this is going to make an entrance with all the subtlety of a 19 foot jack-in-the-box at a funeral. Much is the same with the Black Pepper...

Hmmmm… Beth is being awfully sneaky this time around! Thinking about the surprises in store makes it impossible NOT to bounce, despite the disapproving and slightly worried looks from The Wife…

Illinition: Ack! We have an Amp-Champ! Love, Love, LOVE The Seekim!

Instantly enamored with enchantments of the morph taking place.

At very first impression, it is a considerable surprise that there isn’t any Teak mentioned or credited in this formula. This is reminiscent of the first impressions made with the first encounter with “Antikythera Mechanism”.

There is a wonderfully clean, dark, and rich kind of living wood that commands the respect of all in its presence (or so it would seem).

As The Seekim sits atop the pulse and develops for a few moments, the Black Pepper and the Patchouli bleeds into the fray; distinguishing themselves as the premier scouts on this safari into rollicking, rapscallion redolence.

This is the fragrance of fertility. The Seekim is rich, black, loamy earth. The Seekim is wild, unchecked growth. The Seekim is sex, Sex, SEXXX!

The Seekim is absurdly incredible in every respect.

The Seekim would be the ideal accompaniment to your wildest, pavonine, bohemian frockery. Even better when said frockery has been shamelessly cast to the carpets in favor of slipperier stuff.

Spectrally, The Seekim is dark. Pitch. Pine Needle. Pewter. Eggplant. Espresso. Oxblood.

On Her, The Seekim is a whirlwind of gasps, teeth, sweaty hair, and deep furrows scratched into your back.

On Him, The Seekim is Lamp-eyed hyperventilation, a steely grip, and mile after mile of electrified taste buds.

Beautiful.

6.5 out of 5.

[tinyvulture]

I can pick out each note separately – hippie patchouli, soft cocoa, and sunny hay. Normally, I love all of those notes. But there’s something here that is just not interacting well with my skin. It smells like stale popcorn that’s been left in a hot car or something. I think it’s the way the hay is combining with the other notes. Sounds like it is working out great for others, though. Off to swaps!