This weekend, the Dream Festival is going down. Three stations, three stages, 30 sets, ten hours of live music gold.

So far, all we've told you is who is on the line-up. Now we can reveal much more information about what's going down on Saturday; when the sets were recorded, what the setlists look like and the kind of form these artists were in at the time.

If you want to see when and what's happening on the Unearthed and Double J stages, head here for the set times.

The Jungle Giants (12pm)

Splendour In The Grass, July 2018

A show that proved why The Jungle Giants’ commanding brand of boogie-fied indie rock is a festival favourite. They drew a mammoth crowd (and a few side-of-stage celebs) to the G.W. McLennan tent at Splendour last year with their good-time energy and inventive hooks. Their set spanned from their first EP through to their 2017 album Quiet Ferocity, and their newer Hottest 100-charting hits were met with as much excitement as oldies like ‘She’s A Riot’.



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Whatsapp Sam Hales hypes the packed tent at Splendour

The xx (1pm)

Festival Hall, Melbourne, April 2013

To a lot of people, The xx are a band enjoyed in privacy, in headphones and bedrooms, maybe with a special someone. But the special chemistry of Romy, Oliver, and Jamie xx is in being able to bring the intimacy their music demands to even the biggest of stages. Just ask any of the 1800 attendees about the mood at this show. Most were quietly hugging, humming and dreamily swaying rather than shrieking, enraptured by the stark visual staging and the crystalline, chilly beauty of the xx’s first two albums.

A.B. Original (3pm)

Splendour In The Grass, July 2017

Briggs and Trials hit their first Splendour the way they hit everything - with no compromises and no small talk. The duo impressed with their trunk-rattling ferocity and special guests Paul Kelly, Dan Sultan, and Caiti Baker, but they brought thoughtfulness as much as force. They used their festival platform to call for justice over the killing of Kalgoorlie teenager Elijah Doughty. As a chant of ‘no peace, no justice’ echoed throughout the Mix Up Tent, it made for a spine-chilling reminder how sometimes a performance can be more than just a show, it can be a movement.

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CHVRCHES (4pm)

Splendour In The Grass, July 2018

The cold settled into the Amphitheatre but Chvrches brought the heat, cementing their status as Scotland’s undisputed lords of synthpop. Always a bookies’ favourite, the trio’s towering, cathartic choruses are custom-built for 30,000 voices to belt them out. With the encouragement of not-so-secret weapon, frontman Lauren Mayberry, the new material from Love Is Dead sounded as euphoric as their high-energy back catalogue – ‘The Mother We Share’, ‘Clearest Blue’, ‘Recover’ – hits that already feel like modern classics.

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Tame Impala (5pm)

Enmore Theatre, Sydney, December 2012

These days, Tame Impala regularly play to audiences in the tens of thousands, but even in 2012, Kevin Parker and co. were thinking big picture. A popular bootleg among fans, this Enmore show was, for many, the first time they were experiencing Tame’s second album Lonerism (released two months earlier) and trippy new visuals (Google oscilloscope). Weaving cosmic jams into the extended outros to ‘Elephant’ and ‘Apocalypse Dreams’, the group still possessed some of their earlier, psychedelic exploration but also starting to solidify elements of a show that would make them regular festival headliners at home and abroad for years to come.

Lorde (6pm)

Sidney Myer Music Bowl, Melbourne, November 2017

Four years after ‘Royals’ and Pure Heroine transformed Kiwi teen Ella Yelich-O’Connor into an inspiring, exciting new voice in pop, Lorde up-scaled her live show and embraced the Melodrama for her 2017 world tour. There were unapologetically BIG moments – ‘Green Light’, ‘Perfect Places’, Disclosure team-up ‘Magnets’ – enhanced by a theatrical structure with costume changes, interpretative dancers and video interludes.

Ironically, it was the quieter moments – the deep-feel speeches and stripped-back version of ‘Liability’– that are strongest. This is Lorde in her element: enjoying her music to the fullest, dancing and singing in her inimitable way about the excitement of youth – the heartbreak and hedonism, of growing up and escaping to a bigger world, that it’s ok to retreat to an internal one when it confuses or disappoints you. It’s all here.

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BROCKHAMPTON (7pm)

Enmore Theatre, Sydney, September 2018

The anticipation around the Australian debut of the Internet’s hardest working boy band was nothing less than fevered. BROCKHAMTON’s first Sydney show had the kind of scenes most acts take years to build - their banter swallowed up by screaming fans (some who’d camped overnight to get front row), their raps shouted back at them by a hyped-up room pinballing with electricity.

Kevin Abstract, Merlyn, Joba, Matt, Bearface, and Dom fed off that energy, blasting through cuts from their major label debut Iridescence and SATURATION mixtapes, lapping up an unprompted audience sing-along of ‘SAN MARCOS’ before a sweaty encore of ‘1999 WILDFIRE’ and ‘BOOGIE’. It’s the exhilarating sound of a hip hop collective truly arriving.

Lana Del Rey (8pm)

Splendour In The Grass, July 2012

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Whatsapp Lana Del Rey on-stage, then wading into the Splendour crowd.

Having exploded onto the music scene a year earlier with the inescapable tearjerker ‘Video Games’, Splendour 2012 marked Lana’s first visit to Australia, but it was also an ending point.

Arriving on-stage in full bridal chic and floral veil, she described it as her “death wedding” – the end of a gruelling seven-month tour and a period of intense media scrutiny over her ‘indie’ credentials (a sentence that seems ridiculous in 2019). Drawing from her freshly minted #1 album Born To Die, she was still building her playbook of classically sad, glamorous noir ballads but already exhibiting a velvety voice and star quality that would silence cynics. Framed by an oversized white piano and string section, she sauntered down to the barriers as if descending from the bridal table to greet her excitable family and friends, kickstarting a romance between Lana Del Rey and Australia that still endures.

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Gang of Youths (9pm)

Hordern Pavilion, Sydney, September 2017

Even at their first shows in smaller venues, Gang of Youths shredded like a band destined for big things. By the time they were touring their Hottest 100-dominating second album Go Farther In Lightness, they looked and sounded like a triumphant, fist-pumping stadium act. Playing a sold out hometown Hordern show was a personal triumph for Dave Le’aupepe, and he made it count. Exhibiting serious rock star wattage, he beats his chest during ‘What Can I Do If The Fire Goes Out?’, gyrates his hips to ‘Let Me Down Easy’, hurtles himself across the stage without missing a note.

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He’s the ferocious focal point of the band’s powerhouse energy, whipping up epic rock revelry and moving the audience with every crashing swell of their sweeping songs. ‘Magnolia’, ‘Say Yes To Life’, ‘The Deepest Sighs, The Frankest Shows’ – anthems that transform tragedy into hard-won triumph, and make you feel ass-kickingly invincible.

"For us, it just felt like a place we never predicted getting to, but there we were, and people were with us," GoY guitarist Joji told Ben & Liam on triple j Breakfast of the show (hear the full chat here). "Like, watching a room of 5,000 people accompany each other in therapy. That was the first time for us….seeing what Gang of Youths meant to people.”

So, clear some space wherever you happen to be Saturday night, and soak up the magnitude of one of Australia’s most revered live acts performing with all their life-affirming intensity.