The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
165 BPMs takes its name and its concept directly from the body. A resting heart rate sits around 70 BPMs. Physical exertion, emotional intensity, a great set in a packed room, that number climbs. Maxwell Williams built this fragrance around that specific physiological peak: the moment when music, movement, heat, and presence collapse into a single sensation. The idea was to create something that doesn't just smell like a club, but feels like one, the sensory experience of being exactly where the beat wants you. Not a fantasy of nightlife. The real thing. UFO Parfums has always operated outside conventional fragrance categories, releasing scents through collaborative projects and cultural contexts rather than traditional retail. 165 BPMs is the studio's ode to the deep connection between scent and sound, a love letter to the hour when everything else falls away and the body's own rhythm takes over.
What makes this composition unusual is its internal tension. The heart is built around a push and pull between warm, sweet, animalic notes and cooler, bitter, green ones. Immortelle and honeysuckle absolute bring a honeyed, hay-like warmth that reads as cozy at first. Massoia bark adds a creamy, coconut-adjacent facet that's unexpected in a woody composition. But Spikenard, earthy, camphoraceous, almost radish-like, and Roman chamomile with its apple-skin bitterness, keep the warmth from becoming purely soft. The cooler notes prevent linearity. They keep the fragrance moving, shifting, refusing to settle into something predictable.
The evolution
The opening lands warm and immediate. Buddha wood and araucaria arrive together, conifer-forward without any citrus brightness to soften the entrance. The araucaria adds a slightly camphorated, almost eucalyptus-like sharpness that cuts through the richness. Ambergris appears within the first minutes, not the salty, fecal kind, but the warm, waxy, slightly oceanic facet that adds depth without aggression. The opening reads as woody and close, with a faint animalic undertone that announces itself quietly. Within the first hour, the heart opens. Yellow florals bloom in sequence: mimosa, then honeysuckle, then immortelle weaving through with its characteristic hay-and-honey note. The honeysuckle absolute is lush, almost excessive in its sweetness, but the Bulgarian rose adds a subtle floral counterpoint that keeps the heart from becoming purely syrupy. The overall impression is sweet and dry simultaneously, honey without the softness. By the three-hour mark, the drydown takes over.
Cultural impact
165 BPMs has found its audience in the rave and electronic music community, people who recognize the scent as a marker of a specific cultural moment rather than a status symbol. UFO Parfums designed this fragrance as a perfume for ravers and non-ravers alike, and the response reflects that intent. Wearers describe it as the olfactory equivalent of a great night out, not the fantasy version, but the actual atmosphere of a packed dance floor. The brand's approach, which avoids conventional luxury aesthetics in favor of scene-specific cultural positioning, means 165 BPMs speaks most clearly to people already embedded in that world. For those outside it, the fragrance offers a rare opportunity to understand something from the inside rather than observing from a distance.
