Split Enz will reform for Electric Avenue festival

The lineup for next year’s Electric Avenue music festival has been revealed, with one of New Zealand’s most fabled acts set to reunite for the first time in almost 20 years.

Split Enz has been confirmed as one of the headliners for the two-day event at Christchurch’s Hagley Park on 27-28 February.

It will be the first time the seminal Kiwi band, which includes celebrated song-writing siblings Tim and Neil Finn, have performed since their one-off appearance at Melbourne’s Sound Relief concert in 2009.

The second day of proceedings will be headlined by Grammy-nominated Australian house DJ/producer Dominic Matheson, better known as Dom Dolla.

Other international drawcards include Kesha, Pendulum, Basement Jaxx, Leftfield, Becky Hill, The Streets, Sammy Virji, Peking Duk, Röyksopp and Sudan Archives.

Aside from Split Enz, the local contingent includes L.A.B. Supergroove, Kora, Fazerdaze, Drax Project, Leisure, Greg Churchill and Frank Booker.

The burgeoning festival will swell in scale courtesy with an expanded site and additional main outdoor stage, with up to 90,000 people expected to descend on Hagley.

This year’s sold out event proved to be another bumper day for Christchurch’s economy, with about $10.5m of visitor spend reported by the city council’s economic development agency.

The return of Split Enz for an exclusive appearance will also mark the band’s 50th anniversary and continue a theme of homegrown nostalgia following Th’ Dudes’ riotous revival at this year’s event.

Festival director Callam Mitchell said Split Enz was the most historic booking they had ever made.

“It goes far beyond ‘just another headliner’“ he said in a statement.

“It’s going to be a cultural landmark event of epic proportions.”

The band released nine studio albums between 1975-1984, a period which saw them deliver some of the country’s most preeminent pop anthems.

Mitchell told RNZ he first planted the Electric Avenue seed when Neil Finn played a Cyclone Gabrielle relief concert at the Christchurch Town Hall in 2023.

“I don’t know how seriously it was taken, but I think this year is a big year for the band.

“Maybe we just got lucky on the timing, found the right people to talk to, asked nicely, paid a respectable fee and here we are.”

Underlining the event’s knack of defying the generation gap, Split Enz’s fellow headliner Dom Dolla was not even born by the time of the band’s second leg of post-breakup reunion shows.

Fresh off appearances at Coachella, Creamfields and Lollapalooza, the 33-year-old DJ is a prolific remixer and has unleashed a slew of dancefloor singles over the past decade.

Last year he was nominated for a Grammy for his remix of the Gorillaz’ Tame Impala-featuring single ‘New Gold’ and he won an ARIA award in 2020 for his single ‘San Frandisco’.

Like previous editions of the festival, promoters have accommodated for seasoned clubgoers with the inclusion of trailblazing electronic acts like Basement Jaxx and Leftfield.

“Well, I sit in that demographic, so it's a bit of a personal one for me,” Mitchell said.

“But you know it's really worked and it's helped broaden the age and demographic of our audience.”

Pre-sales for the event open on 10 September.