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Wednesday 9 October 2024

Balarama Tangy Gifts Love Me

 


A Balarama foil-wrapped incense distributed in the UK by Tangy Gifts, a wholesaler of smoking paraphernalia. This packet came from Zam Zam Direct, who also brand and sell Balarama foil-wrapped incense. What the relationship is between the two companies I don't know. 

I like these Balarama perfumed incenses - they are bright, modern, and playful. The scents are somewhat different to traditional Indian or Asian incense, and are more in line with room and car air fresheners, scented candles, and air diffusers. I suppose it's like the difference between pipe tobacco and vapes. There will be those for whom these modern, playful scents are too trivial, that they don't carry the weight and seriousness and tradition of regular incense - and I should imagine that those who particularly like masala style incense, and are not in favour of perfumed incense, would dislike these the most. 

I'm very open to different types of incense, and have long had a "soft spot" for the freedom and modernity of perfumed incense; and I particularly like playful/interesting incense with new scents, albeit they are usually not profound, and rarely engage with the inner self. 

This Love Me incense has some balsamic volatility and wet acidity on the stick - it is somewhat musky, sexy, green, and seductive. A bit crude and cheap and damp. I get the sexiness, but it doesn't draw me in. Not that I'm repelled by it, I actually quite like it, but it's not an incense that compels me, and I wouldn't feel invited or attracted if someone was wearing it and flirting with me. I'd kind of feel that we weren't compatible. 

The scent on the burn is similar, though fainter (very faint), vaguer, and a little blurred and smoky - this is such a common refrain  of my reviews of scented incense (be it basic cheap dipped sticks or scented masala style sticks) that I feel I can take it for granted that the fragrance on the burn of scented incense will have less clarity, less strength, less depth, less range, and less balance than the scent on the stick.  Anyway, on the whole this stick hasn't impressed me with its scent nor its performance.  


Date: Oct 2024    Score: 24
***

Balarama foil-wrapped


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