While such a statement might conjure the holy icons of celebrities on magazine covers or the communal prayers of sports crowds, or even the near-transcendental flutter experienced at the promise of large sums of money, Wallace’s truth is probably a lot more subtle and personalised, centred around our view of ourselves and the yearning for something more. As such, much of the worship goes on inside our heads, small hopes and habits we repeat over and over, as though incantation and ritual might invoke our better selves.

Don’t Hide From The Light, the debut release from PAT MOON, feels like this sensation committed to music. The solo recording project of Portland’s Kate Davis, who you might know as the face behind Track and Field Records, PAT MOON utilises analog synths and drum machines to create what could be described as dark dream dance or ecclesiastical electro-pop. At once insular and expansive, the album feels like a private ceremony within an abandoned church, solemn and serious and sacred in its own humble way, pertaining to no system of belief beyond that of human experience yet feeling instantly recognisable, a likeness of our own inner-thoughts. Such empathy is present from the first bars of ‘Feel You’, the opener possessing that warm-yet-cold feeling peculiar to cathedrals, where death and guilt and love and life are so entwined they become one.

Other highlights include ‘Show Me a Sign’, an echoing, synth-heavy plea for enlightenment, the spectral chorus of ‘I See You’ and ‘Love Me as I Am’, another song that manages to be at once intimate and vast, submissive and resolute, a steadfast hymn summoned from deep within. Closing track ‘Enter My Mind / All I Know is Now’ is imbued with a certain lightness, a candle-lit organ-drone which seems to brighten across its run-time.

With its melancholic seriousness punctuated with near-mystical frisson, PAT MOON’s debut is a reminder that worship is not some hotline for divine intervention but rather a process of feeling and thinking and believing. Sure, Davis may find her prayers unanswered, her rituals unrewarded, but you get the sense that the very process of acting and asking can be a route to confidence and love. One that does not rely on the whim of a deity or the alignment of the stars.

Don’t Hide From The Light is out now and you can buy it from the PAT MOON Bandcamp page.

Photo by Sam Velenne

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‘Hair’, taken from 2012’s Ætherea, is almost certainly the darkest, heaviest track on our release. At first appearing to be a moody rock number, the song grows into something altogether more substantial, the clattering drums and discordant squealing and vicious guitars cumulating into something as dark and ominous as Biblical thunderclouds. Through it all come the vocals, weaving themselves amongst the dense fog like calls from some doom-dream deity.

The art piece for Sondra’s song was produced by Oregon-based artist Rachael Perisho, who you might recognise as the talent behind the Good, Good Blood cover. I’ve been more than a little overwhelmed by the artistic responses to the songs, and this one is no exception. You can find all of Rachael’s work on her website, and be sure to follow her on Tumblr and Instagram too. You can pre-order Quiet, Constant Friends now via the Wake The Deaf Bandcamp page. All tape orders come with super-limited edition postcard prints, and all profits go to Worldreader, so why not treat yourself and feel good about helping a great cause at the same time?

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