RADIO BOMBAY

Top Notes	Heart Notes	Base Notes
radiant wood	sandalwood	balsam fir absolute
copper	radiant iris	coconut musc
cedar	boronia	ambergris

Transistor radio hewn of sandalwood radiates ragas in the Bandra heat. Hot copper tubes warm the soft wood releasing blooms of musk, cream, peach, ambrette, coco, cedar distillates.

Playlist | Liner Notes | Ingredients

Spotify Playlist

Bombay Radio

Liner Notes

I am interested in hypothetical scent. Not everything has a strong or readily perceivable aroma, but objects can suggest a fragrance. Light bulbs glow. Electricity courses through their metal filaments. They melt the dust on their surface emitting wisps of heat. The tubes in amplifiers have a certain aroma. When my ‘69 Fender Deluxe gets heated-up (after rip-roaring monster shredding), the back of the amp produces a hot dusty metallic grease perfume - the scent of backstage in a humid venue.

So what if there was a tube amplifier in an old radio made of sandalwood? Then the interaction of the heat would open up the pores of the wood, singing its smooth elegant fragrance - puffs of musky cedar, peach, coconut, lactones, milk.

Real sandalwood essence is perfection. I often wear it neat. It smells of India, effigies, purity, focus. Unfortunately, it has been overharvested, so perfumers don’t use the oil from Mysore anymore.

Radio Bombay is a deconstruction of the Mysore santal rebuilt from all the aspects written above. I imagine the radio sitting in a small hot shop in Bandra - the “Brooklyn” of Bombay (sorry). The heat deconstructs the oils in the wood. Ragas and Geeta Dutt tunes jangle out of its tiny speaker in the busy city.