Igloo Magazine's REVIEW
Pietro Da Sacco | 12/01/2005
(4 out of 5 stars)
"(...)
(08.31.05) Vessel is Gavin Toomey, whom an imdb.com search will reveal has been responsible for digital video effects on 29 disparate films. Resist is his aural vacation, his get-away escape to the deep waters of the ocean. Filled with slippery synths, crackling static and bubbling polyrhythms, Resist is hard to, well, resist. It has a lure of cool water and calming waves, of slow currents and oceanic arms that enfold and comfort the listener.
A piano melody trickles through the digital static of "Ran" like the sluggish movement of the thermocline, hanging suspended between the colder depths and the sun-warmed surface water. The title track "Resist" flows like tiny currents idling in a vast blueness with tiny patches of sea kelp breathing foamy bubbles on the turgid surface. There is a field recording in "My Defender" but you hear it through a haze of water as if you were suspended in a pond, your head mostly submerged in the sticky water. "Kerna" weeps with strings while dull boxes stuffed with heavy air are beat in a scattered rhythm against a sandy shoreline. A carillon sighs through its bells like light glittering off sunlit water.
While researching Toomey, I stumbled upon a long discussion about the vfx work he was involved with for Troy and the technical difficulty of the computerized rendering work made my head spin. I needed a panacea, a "Calgon! Take me away!" moment. I had Resist, as in "hard to." Toomey's work as Vessel is saturated with moisture, a delightful plunge into aquatic dub ambience. Recommended."
