The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
Arthur Clayton Emrick called Ventriloquism a cuvée, the phrase borrowed straight from winemaking to describe what happens when you stack a year's worth of individual incense work into a single release. Released in 2023 under his house, Jinx Smells, the fragrance extends the lineage Emrick had been quietly refining, compositions built from natural materials with oud and resin running through them like a spine. Smoke dominates the surface, frankincense and resinous materials give it weight, and the whole thing reads heavy, dense, almost architectural in how it occupies the air around the wearer. Ventriloquism is part of that same current: cold-weather incense with smoke curled through it.
Building the composition from twenty-three separate incense accords is an unusual structural choice. Emrick composed each accord individually and then layered them, weaving individual smoke-and-resin voices together into one sustained chord of scent rather than building from top to bottom. The materials overlap, share air, blur into each other while retaining their own character. Champaca, oud, and raspberry all appear in the composition, bringing sweetness and floral lift to a structure otherwise held together by smoke.
The evolution
The opening is dense and almost edible, nag champa and bakhoor filling the immediate space with thick, warm smoke. Raspberry flickers underneath, a sweetness that keeps the incense from going austere. Japanese incense fans out alongside frankincense, and the smoke continues to build underneath the resins, functioning less like a single note and more like the air in the room itself. The florals surface at some point during wear, peony and rose and jasmine all woven into the resin rather than sitting on top of it. Oud appears as the composition deepens, and the raspberry returns later in a different register, dustier and less ripe. Cocoa and licorice trail at the edges throughout. The late stage is frankincense and musk, a quiet that sits close to fabric, the kind of trace that outlasts the heavier opening and remains noticeable on scarves and coat collars into the following day.
Cultural impact
Ventriloquism leans into one of perfumery's less-traveled corners, the overlap between incense and oud where most compositions rarely sit comfortably. Emrick's decision to layer twenty-three individual incense accords rather than lean on a handful of resin materials is what gives the fragrance its particular density, a choice that sets it apart from more restrained incense releases. The result is a scent designed to occupy space, to register as atmosphere rather than as a passing accent.
