'Choreograph Inbetween SONG x SCENT' (2021)

Choreograph SONG x SCENT is a perfume and music crossover project where original songs are recorded and released, each with their own limited edition handcrafted olfactory artwork. The first such release was a song and scent combination named 'Inbetween'.

The Choreograph SONG x SCENT project began serendipitously in 2020 when I was returning to a scent structure that I had been working on already for some years. There was something transportative in the work in progress scent, a facet that brought me a flood of intense recognition of a particular time and place.

It was fairly normal that I listened to gentle music whilst blending my perfume experiments. However, when my computer randomly played a recent mix of a work in progress song I had been producing, the combination of that song and the scent experiment created an overwhelming sense of harmony between my senses. I had a synesthetic experience where not only colours but new images and fantastical locations rose up from the sensory combination I had stumbled across.

I was fascinated by my discovery, and excitedly returned to always working on the scent whilst listening to that particular song - and then also similarly, always kept a scent mouillette sprayed with the scent nearby whilst working on that particular song (adding more instruments and effects).

This iterative process continued until I couldn't separate the song or the scent and there was a strong relationship formed within me between these different media. I then set about wondering how I could incorporate some of the colours and visual imagery that came up in me, and both smelled the scent and listened to the song whilst working on the imagery and product packaging.

Award winning perfume blogger Stephan Matthews put 'Inbetween' into his Favourite Five fragrances of 2021, whilst other independent perfume reviewers remarked how the combination of the fragrance and the song were particularly well suited to each other.

I always intended to expand the project to include several other songs and scents, however - I ran out of budget and sadly wasn't able to make this a reality - despite having several other work in progress songs and perfume experiments lined up.