Discovery Set

A house that files its releases under treble, mid and bass.

NOISE begins with a noise. The scratch of a woollen blanket. A blackbird singing in the dead of winter. Mad scientists, working with sound, sight and memory. Every release is built around something anybody would recognise and nobody would think to bottle: a rusty gate, an elevator, the gap left after a song ends.

The work is French, and each of these six came from a different hand. Bertrand Duchaufour made one, Mark Buxton another. What holds the six together is the vocabulary, taken whole from a mixing desk.

NOISE builds fragrances the way a record gets built. Sound comes first and everything follows from it: the three tiers on every product page are treble, mid and bass, and a play button sits beside every bottle. Sound shapes the world before anyone is born, and the familiar mixed with the unexpected goes straight past the intellect and into the deepest corners of the mind. Sound, sight and memory are the three powers the work draws on.

The work is made in France and handed to a rotating cast of noses that has included Bertrand Duchaufour, Mark Buxton and David Chieze. The subjects are ordinary on purpose: a rusty garden gate, an elevator ride, the gap left after a song ends. Each one is designed to make its own mark and not to be forgotten.