Singles such as “Love Tonight” and “Won’t Forget You” may have elevated Melbourne duo Shouse to the upper echelons of the global dance scene, but for Ed Service and Jack Madin the joy of creating their debut album came from collaborating with friends in the local music and arts community. Or, as Service tells Apple Music, “The collective ecstasy of people sharing genuine musical connection.” While the success of those singles afforded the duo the opportunity to undertake international songwriting and recording with producers such as Chrome Sparks (“Think I’m Thinking”), it was the sessions in their Melbourne studio that gave the album its heart and soul. There, Service and Madin gathered family, friends, and artists from acts such as Hiatus Kaiyote and Northeast Party House into a giant choir, periodically recording them over long, joyous get-togethers, their massed voices elevating and shaping the music the duo had spent the best part of 10 years crafting. A key focus for the album was expanding Shouse’s sound beyond the commercial dance genre. “We come from a background of bands and experimental electronic music and the folk scene, so there’s a few songs we snuck on the record we wouldn’t be able to release otherwise, because they don’t make sense in this commercial dance music context,” says Service. Case in point is the seven-and-a-half minute “Into It,” featuring the sultry vocals of Melbourne musician Harmony Byrne, and the near-10-minute epic “Slow Road,” boasting LA-based singer Dandelion Head. “We’re songwriters, we’re musicians, we love making music with people,” adds Service. “This album’s actually a bit of an attempt to redefine ourselves.” Here, Service takes Apple Music through Collective Ecstasy, track by track. “Call My Name” “We devised it as wrapping up a trilogy that came with ‘Love Tonight’ and ‘Won’t Forget You.’ ‘Call My Name’ was essentially a gesture towards the siren call of all the people around the world that share a love of music and, incidentally, our music. They keep calling us, whether it’s through bookings or streams or Instagram DMs. So ‘Call My Name’ starts the record because that’s the reason we keep coming back.” “I Believe in Us” “That song was written by Jack’s brother, Henry. It was a long, deep, melancholy, discursive, marimba-driven song with lots of delay and reverb, but I put a big ’90s house beat on it. We got our choir in—there’s Jace XL, the Northeast Party House guys, Hiatus Kaiyote, heaps of other special Melbourne musicians—and we spent a great day in the studio in Collingwood. We really leaned into that ’90s house vibe, which is so fun.” “Only You” “‘Only You’ is a song Jack and I wrote at Jack’s country property. We go out together, cook some food, and just spend late nights in the bush in kind of like a nice shack. It’s this nice, close, intimate song—we wanted it to feel like someone is whispering in your ear. And who does that better than the Cub Sport guys. We messaged them on IG and a few weeks later they came through our studio. Tim [Nelson] from Cub Sport really injected a beautiful intensity, emotionality, and intimacy to the song.” “Whisper” “HABITS were an iconic Melbourne underground act; experimental, hard electronic music. And we wrote this song for Angel [Connolly] from HABITS. It’s easily the poppiest, brightest song that Angel has ever sung. I think we were referencing ‘One Kiss,’ Calvin Harris, songs of that ilk. It’s got silly, spicy lyrics—it’s sexy, it’s sweet.” “Sunrise” “‘Sunrise’ is a song that Jack and I wrote in Jack’s bush shack. It was just a little refrain—‘take me to the sunrise’—as I think the sun was close to rising. We took it to our choir and group of musicians and artists and sang it over and over and over again, and our singers really added these new flavors and sensuality and emotion. Ideally, it’s a song you can play at 2, 3, 4 am to inspire people to push onto the sunrise.” “Think I’m Thinking” “We went to LA for a few shows in America and hooked up with some friends over there. And our friend Banoffee was like, ‘You should get together with my friend Jeremy [Malvin],’ who’s Chrome Sparks, an amazing producer with this cool studio in Echo Park in LA. It’s just a song about care and thinking about each other and love. It’s intimate, it’s sweet.” “Love Tonight (Edit)” “It’s a phenomenon. It’s special to us because it’s got this real authenticity to it. It was made with friends in Brunswick, for nothing, and we captured this beautiful moment on tape. It bopped around Melbourne for a bit like we intended it to, and then it came back five years later and utterly changed our lives. We were working normal jobs, we’d kind of given up on the idea of being full-time professional musicians, and it changed everything. It kind of became an anthem for the pandemic. I think it will forever be associated with that, hopefully in a positive way.” “Without You” “This is another song Henry made, and he wrote it for his girlfriend at the time, Rachel, who’s singing on the song. That’s early-era Shouse—we recorded it in our little garage studio in Collingwood. It’s quite a different production style to the rest of the record, it has a soft, poppy, ’90s vibe. We love Henry, we love Rachel, and we just wanted to have them both on the record.” “Into It” “Harmony Byrne is a wonderful friend who totally embodies her name—she’s got music in every fiber of her being. She [makes] beautiful, ’70s rock-adjacent folk stuff. It’s probably one of the only electronic songs she’s ever done but we wanted to give space for her voice to soar over the beats and the simple, melancholy bassline. All her songs are quite introspective and deep, and we wanted to write something sexy and outward looking.” “Slow Road” “Our friend Dandelion Head is singing on it; a beautiful friend in LA. And the song is just about chilling out. It’s about this world where there’s so much information saturation, so much demand to create content and put yourself out in the world on social media. We wrote those lyrics about taking a breath and getting back to spending slow time with people you love. If you’ve got a song called ‘Slow Road’ it should be 10 minutes long.” “Sunrise (Reprise)” “It just felt so good in the studio, having people on the guitars playing and singing. That version is free time, there’s no click, there’s no drum machine, and everyone’s singing. We just wanted to capture the feeling of the free-form human time in the studio.” “Won’t Forget You (Edit)” “It’s a song about camaraderie and friendship and love. We wrote it as a follow-up to ‘Love Tonight’ about a lot of people we met and engaged with around the word. It’s part two of the trilogy.” “Wherever You Are” (with Vance Joy) “It’s about love lost, then found again, then lost again, and then found again. It’s a simple, beautiful song. Jack wrote it in his dad’s shed on a dusty, old, out-of-tune piano. Our A&R guy is mates with Vance Joy’s manager and, to our great surprise, James [Keogh, aka Vance Joy] loved it. I think he doesn’t normally do collabs, but he was just like, ‘This song is beautiful.’ We had a great day together, and he recorded such a moving, beautiful vocal performance, which felt like a nice way to end the record.”