Splendour Is Going Virtual: Here’s What You Need To Know
For starters, the line-up is wild.
Splendour In The Grass is making its long-awaited return this year, after taking 2020 off due to the coronavirus pandemic. The real-life shindig will be (hopefully) happening in November, but this morning organisers announced a special virtual festival will also be happening in July — when the event would usually take place.
There’s a lot going on in the virtual festival, with live sets locked in from the likes of Khalid, Chvrches, Pheobe Bridgers, and Charli XCX. Confused by how it’ll actually all work out? Then never fear, we’ve broken it down for you.
What’s Splendour XR?
Splendour XR is the name for this additional virtual festival, brought to you by the Splendour team. In essence, it’ll hew as close to the Splendour formula as possible — as Al Newstead over at ABC reports, the artists will be performing in a digitally rendered version of the Byron Bay parklands site.
There’ll be a number of different virtual “stages” that you can flip through, and the entire thing will take place over two days. Basically, all you’ll be missing is long lines to the toilet and food stalls, accoutrements that you can very easily replicate from your own home. Just pay your housemates to stand in a line outside the bathroom door for a few hours, and voila: Splendour at home!
It’s boasting a suitably packed line-up, one to rival even the live, in-person iterations of the festival. The really big drawcards include The Killers, Splendour champion Denzel Curry, Tash Sultana, Phoebe Bridgers, homegrown heroes The Chats, Charli XCX and a weird new project from superstar Grimes.
Tell Me About This Grimes Thing
I’d love to. As Newstead reports, Grimes’ new project is a so-called “AI girl group”, born from the voices inside the megastar’s head. Grimes has described the project as being in “beta stage”, meaning that Splendour audiences will be some of the first in the world to experience the new tech.
How Will I Actually Get Around The Festival?
You’ll have two choices as to how to make your way around the digital iteration of Splendour In The Grass: you can either create your own avatar, or watch livestreams from 70 different cameras. Either option sounds pretty good to us — there’ll be a lot of fun to the character creation element, and the artists have been encouraged to perform their sets from wherever they see fit. Expect all kinds of strange backgrounds and unique set-ups.
You can get a glimpse of what’ll go down on Splendour’s fly-through vid below.
When Is It And Will I Pay For It?
The festival will run over the course of the usual Splendour in the Grass dates, Saturday July 24 and Sunday July 25. As usual, you can buy tickets for either one day or both. You can get all the ticket details over here.
Will I Be Able to Watch The Sets After The Festival Finishes?
Yep — the streams will be available to be purchased on-demand after the digital festival wraps up. But that means you’ll miss out on wandering around the place as a digital avatar, so attending the actual festival is strongly encouraged.
For more info, head to the Splendour XR website — and scope out the full line-up below.
