Confidence Man: The Band Behind Pop's Best Live Show (Real Names, Members and 2026)

Confidence Man are an Australian electronic-pop band, a four-piece formed in Brisbane in 2016, and no, Janet Planet and Sugar Bones are not their real names. Those are stage personas, part of a deliberate mystery the group has never officially broken. They are the act that turned a bit of disco-pop cheek into arguably the best live show in dance music, then moved to London and rebuilt their sound around 1990s rave. This is a working DJ and producer's guide to who Confidence Man really are, what is confirmed about the people behind the names, why their gigs get called the greatest on the circuit, and where to catch them across the back end of 2026.

Confidence Man at a glance

• Who: an Australian electronic-pop band, formed in Brisbane, Queensland, in 2016.
• The line-up: a four-piece of two vocalist-dancers, Janet Planet and Sugar Bones, plus two hooded producers, Reggie Goodchild and Clarence McGuffie.
• Real names: stage names only, never officially confirmed by the band; press reports give Janet Planet as Grace Stephenson and Sugar Bones as Aidan Moore, with Reggie Goodchild reported as Lewis Stephenson.
• McGuffie: the fourth member's real identity is kept private and is not publicly known.
• Now based: London, after relocating from Australia and sharing a flat in Dalston.
• Latest album: 3AM (La La La), released 18 October 2024, followed by the 4AM deluxe (February 2025) and the 5AM remix set (April 2025).
• Earlier albums: Confident Music for Confident People (2018) and Tilt (2022).
• Labels: associated with Heavenly Recordings, I OH YOU and Polydor; 3AM arrived via I OH YOU.
• Live reputation: synchronised choreography, costume changes and high-energy sets; Dork called them the "Greatest Live Act In The World (probably)" after Glastonbury 2024.
• Glastonbury 2024: multiple sets across the weekend, including an Other Stage performance that drew one of the festival's biggest crowds and a four-star NME review.
• 2026 run: a festival and touring year taking in Kappa FuturFestival, HARD Summer, a reported London date and Red Rocks in Colorado.

Who are Confidence Man?

Confidence Man are an Australian electronic-pop group, formed in Brisbane, Queensland, in 2016. On paper that is a simple fact. In practice it undersells one of the more distinctive propositions in modern dance-pop, because Confidence Man are less a band in the guitars-and-drums sense than a full production, a choreographed, costumed, tongue-in-cheek machine built to detonate on a festival stage.

The group is a four-piece with a clear division of labour. Out front are two vocalists and dancers, Janet Planet and Sugar Bones, who handle the songs, the routines and the between-song patter. Behind them, hooded and largely silent, are two producers, Reggie Goodchild and Clarence McGuffie, who build the tracks and hold the whole thing together. Sam Hales and Lachlan McGeehan are listed among the band's former members, part of the group's earlier Brisbane life before the current formation settled.

What sets them apart from most acts in the wave of artists reshaping British dance is the commitment to the bit. Confidence Man do not step out of character. In interviews, on stage and in press shots, Janet Planet is Janet Planet and Sugar Bones is Sugar Bones. It is closer to professional wrestling's kayfabe than to the usual pop-star promo cycle, and it is the single most searched-for thing about them: people want to know whether any of it is real.

Are Janet Planet and Sugar Bones their real names?

No. Those are stage names, and this is where honesty matters more than a tidy answer. The band has never officially confirmed the real identities behind the personas, and they actively maintain the mystery, so anything printed as a "real name" comes from press reporting rather than from the group itself.

With that caveat firmly in place, here is what has been reported. Janet Planet's real name is widely given as Grace Stephenson. Sugar Bones has been reported as Aidan Moore, though some sources render it as Aidan Moore-Stephenson, and the two versions do not agree, which is exactly why it is worth treating as reported rather than settled. Reggie Goodchild, one of the two producers, is reported to be Lewis Stephenson. The fourth member, Clarence McGuffie, keeps his real identity private, and it is not publicly known. We are not going to invent one.

The stage names themselves have their own bit of lore. According to the band, "Reggie Goodchild" and "Clarence McGuffie" were lifted from headstones the members spotted in an Australian cemetery, which is either a charming origin story or another layer of the act, and with Confidence Man it is genuinely hard to tell. That ambiguity is the point. The group has cultivated a deliberate air of mystery from the start, and the refusal to confirm anything is a creative choice as much as a privacy one.

If this sounds familiar, it should. Building recognition through a strict persona, so the image arrives before the biography, is a strategy plenty of dance acts have used to their advantage. It is the same instinct that drives artists who understand when image comes before the music. Confidence Man simply take it further than most, keeping four people's real lives almost entirely out of the frame.

Meet the members: two singers, two masked producers

The clearest way to understand Confidence Man is by role rather than by name, because the roles are stable even when the identities stay hidden.

• Janet Planet: co-vocalist and dancer, the deadpan-glamour half of the front line. Reported in the press as Grace Stephenson, unconfirmed by the band.
• Sugar Bones: co-vocalist and dancer, the second voice in the call-and-response and the other half of the choreography. Reported as Aidan Moore, with the Moore-Stephenson variant floating around, again unconfirmed.
• Reggie Goodchild: producer and keyboardist, hooded on stage, the main architect of the records. Reported to be Lewis Stephenson.
• Clarence McGuffie: the second hooded producer, whose real identity is kept private and publicly unknown.

That two-and-two structure, glamorous front, anonymous engine room, is central to the whole design. The vocalists carry the personality and the spectacle; the producers carry the sound and the silence. You can know Confidence Man's whole discography and still not be able to name a single person on stage, which is precisely how they like it.

From Brisbane to Dalston: how London rewired their sound

The most interesting chapter of the story is not the Brisbane origin but the move that came later. The band relocated from Australia to London, sharing a flat in Dalston, and the change of city changed the music. Where the earlier records leaned on disco-pop and indie-dance cheek, the 3AM (La La La) era drew directly on 1990s UK rave and the capital's queer club scene, with cited influences including Underworld, The Prodigy and The KLF. This is a band that arrived as pop provocateurs and reinvented themselves as ravers.

Speaking to NME, Janet Planet framed the move in typically blunt terms, saying "Australia's a bit too small for our personalities, our egos. You just hang around with kangaroos, they don't care." The line is a joke and also a thesis: Confidence Man needed a bigger, weirder, later-running city to become the band they wanted to be, and London's rave heritage gave them the raw material.

The record's title tells the same story. The band has said the album chases the energy of the small hours because, in their London writing sessions, 3am was the hottest, most productive time. Sugar Bones told NME there is "a perfect schedule for drunk writing," adding that you "can't handle Monday to Friday, it might destroy your life." The result is a record built to sound like the deep end of a night out rather than the pre-drinks.

For anyone who cares about how the city shapes its music, this arc lands squarely in mneemo territory. London's late-night culture is the subject we keep circling, from where London goes to dance to the future of London club culture, and Confidence Man are a rare example of an outside act absorbing that scene wholesale and turning it back into pop. They did not just move to London. They let London rewrite them.

The albums: from Confident Music to the 3AM cycle

Confidence Man's catalogue is compact but has a clear trajectory, from bratty disco-pop to a full rave record. If you are coming to them fresh, this is the map.

• Confident Music for Confident People (13 April 2018): the debut, the record that introduced the personas, the choreography and the deadpan humour, powered by early singles like "Boyfriend (Repeat)" and "Bubblegum."
• Tilt (1 April 2022): the second album, pushing the club side harder while keeping the pop hooks, home to the likes of "Holiday."
• 3AM (La La La) (18 October 2024): the pivot to rave, recorded partly at London's Pony Studios, produced by Reggie Goodchild with James Greenwood, who records as Ghost Culture, and Mark Ralph.
• 4AM (La La La) (28 February 2025): a deluxe edition of the third album, adding three further tracks to the run.
• 5AM (La La La) (18 April 2025): a remix album that hands the 3AM material over to other producers, extending the concept into the small hours implied by the titles.

The 3AM singles rollout tracked that late-night idea deliberately. Lead single "I CAN'T LOSE YOU" arrived on 7 June 2024, "SO WHAT" followed on 6 August 2024, and the double drop of "CONTROL" and "REAL MOVE TOUCH" landed on 4 October 2024, just ahead of the album. Around the main records sit the singles fans reach for first, including "Does It Make You Feel Good?" from 2019 and the collaborations "On & On (Again)" with Daniel Avery and "Now U Do" with DJ Seinfeld, both from 2023, which underline how comfortably the band sits alongside serious club producers.

The through-line is escalation. Each record turns the tempo, the theatrics and the rave content up a notch, so that by the 3AM-to-5AM stretch Confidence Man have become a genuine dance act wearing a pop act's costume.

Why Confidence Man are called the greatest live act (probably)

Here is the part that matters most, because it is the reason the search traffic exists at all. Confidence Man are widely described as one of the most talked-about live acts on the circuit, and the reputation is earned on stage, not in the studio. The shows are built on synchronised choreography, rapid costume changes and relentless, high-energy sets, closer to a piece of physical theatre than a standard gig, and they do it for around ninety minutes without letting the tension drop.

The tag that stuck came from Dork, which after Glastonbury 2024 dubbed them the "Greatest Live Act In The World (probably)." The parenthetical is very Confidence Man, a huge claim undercut by a wink, but plenty of people who have seen the show would drop the "probably." The band converts the humour of the records into spectacle without ever tipping into novelty. The routines are tight, the energy is real, and the crowd management is expert.

This is where the band earns comparison with the peers we cover. Turning studio music into an overwhelming live experience is the hardest trick in dance, the thing that separates dance music's biggest live artist and another festival-headlining live act from the producers who never quite translate off the record. Confidence Man belong in that conversation, and they get there through choreography and commitment rather than through visuals or a laptop. It is a genuinely feel-good show, in the same lineage as the feel-good dance music that defines a lot of the current British scene, only staged with the discipline of a touring musical.

Glastonbury 2024 and the rise of the live show

If you want a single moment where the live reputation crystallised, it is Glastonbury 2024. Confidence Man played multiple sets across the weekend, reported as four in total, treating the festival less as a booking and more as a takeover. The centrepiece was an Other Stage set on 28 June 2024 that pulled one of the entire festival's biggest crowds, a genuine word-of-mouth event. NME reviewed it at four stars.

Sugar Bones told NME, "I do think Con Man suits Glastonbury down to a T," and the festival proved him right. The band's mix of pop accessibility, club energy and pure showmanship is almost custom-built for a big outdoor stage, which is why they translate so well to the festival dance stages that have become a fixture of the British summer.

The momentum carried straight into their own headline dates. On 7 November 2024 they headlined London's Brixton Academy, and around the same period they turned up at Mixmag Lab London in October 2024 for a DJ set, which brings us to the one thing that confuses ticket buyers more than anything else.

Confidence Man versus "Confidence Man (DJ)": the two listings explained

Search for tickets and you will sometimes find two entries: "Confidence Man" and "Confidence Man (DJ)." They are not two different acts, and they are not an impostor. They are two different formats of the same project.

"Confidence Man" is the full live band, the four-piece show with vocals, choreography, costume changes and the whole ninety-minute spectacle. "Confidence Man (DJ)" is the stripped-back club version, where the members play a DJ set rather than staging the full production, as they did at Mixmag Lab. The distinction matters if you are buying a ticket: one is a headline event you plan a night around, the other is a club appearance that slots into a longer night out.

It is a useful reminder of how the same artists can scale a show up or down to fit the room, a tension we dig into when we weigh small club rooms versus festivals. Confidence Man are one of the few acts equally at home in both. If a listing confuses you, check whether it says "(DJ)," and know that you are choosing between the show and the set rather than between two acts.

Where to see Confidence Man in 2026

Confidence Man have spent 2026 firmly on the road, across festivals in Europe and North America. As ever with tour data, confirm anything before you travel, because aggregator listings drift and billings change, but the shape of the run is clear.

The summer took in some of the biggest names on the calendar. Aggregators listed Confidence Man at Kappa FuturFestival in Turin across 3 to 5 July 2026, then at HARD Summer in Inglewood, California over 1 to 2 August 2026, with a London date reported at Burgess Park on 8 August 2026. Burgess Park is the same south London site used for Boiler Room's London events, so that date appeared tied to a Boiler Room or Burgess Park bill, though the exact billing was worth checking at the time. By the time you read this in the autumn, that summer stretch has already happened, and the news is in the reviews.

Looking ahead from here, the marquee date still to come is Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado on 16 October 2026, one of the most storied venues in the world and a fitting stage for a band whose entire pitch is the spectacle. It is the clearest sign of how far the live show has scaled, from Brisbane rooms to a natural amphitheatre in the Rockies. Whatever else shifts, treat the official channels as the final word on dates and any aggregator listing as a starting point rather than a promise.

Why Confidence Man matter

Confidence Man matter because they collapse a distinction the industry usually insists on: the one between a serious dance act and a genuinely fun one. Here is a band that hides its members, keeps its real names off the record, jokes its way through every interview, and then delivers what a lot of people consider the best live show in pop, built on real choreography and real craft. The humour is not a substitute for the music. It is the packaging around a project that got heavier and more rave-literate with every album.

They also model something that runs right through the acts we champion, from making feeling festival-sized to the whole lineage of British club artists: the idea that dance music can be emotionally direct and physically overwhelming at the same time. Confidence Man do it with disco-pop and choreography rather than with sub-bass and tension, but the goal is identical, to make a big room feel like the best night of your life. That they do it while refusing to tell you who they actually are only makes the trick more impressive.

FAQ

Is Confidence Man a band or a DJ?

They are a four-piece Australian electronic-pop band, made up of two vocalist-dancers and two hooded producers, who put on a full choreographed live show. The members also perform DJ sets, which is why ticket listings sometimes show a separate "Confidence Man (DJ)" entry. It is the same act in two formats, the full production or the club set.

Are Janet Planet and Sugar Bones their real names?

No, those are stage names. Press reports give Janet Planet as Grace Stephenson and Sugar Bones as Aidan Moore, but the band has never officially confirmed this and stays fully in character. Treat the reported names as unconfirmed. Maintaining that mystery is a deliberate part of the Confidence Man project.

Who are the two other members of Confidence Man?

Two producers who perform hooded on stage under the names Reggie Goodchild and Clarence McGuffie. Goodchild is reported in the press to be Lewis Stephenson, while McGuffie's real identity is kept private and is not publicly known. Together they build the tracks and hold the live show together behind the two vocalists.

Where are Confidence Man from?

They formed in Brisbane, Queensland, in Australia in 2016. The band later relocated to London, sharing a flat in Dalston, and that move directly shaped their third album, which drew on 1990s UK rave and the city's queer club scene rather than on their earlier Australian disco-pop.

What is Confidence Man's latest album?

3AM (La La La), released on 18 October 2024. It was followed by a deluxe edition, 4AM (La La La), on 28 February 2025, which added three tracks, and a remix album, 5AM (La La La), on 18 April 2025. The album chases late-night rave energy, with the band saying 3am was the hottest, most productive time in their writing sessions.

What are Confidence Man's biggest songs?

Fan favourites include "Boyfriend (Repeat)," "Bubblegum," "Holiday" and "Does It Make You Feel Good?" from their earlier albums, plus "I CAN'T LOSE YOU" and "SO WHAT" from the 3AM (La La La) era. They have also released collaborations, including "On & On (Again)" with Daniel Avery and "Now U Do" with DJ Seinfeld.

Why are Confidence Man famous for their live shows?

Their gigs are built on synchronised dance routines, rapid costume changes and relentless energy across sets of around ninety minutes. It reads more like physical theatre than a standard concert. After Glastonbury 2024, Dork dubbed them the "Greatest Live Act In The World (probably)," and the reputation has only grown as the touring has scaled up.

Did Confidence Man play Glastonbury?

Yes. At Glastonbury 2024 they played multiple sets across the weekend, reported as four in total, including an Other Stage performance on 28 June 2024 that drew one of the festival's biggest crowds. NME reviewed the set at four stars, and the weekend became the moment their live reputation crystallised.

What label are Confidence Man on?

They have been associated with several labels, including Heavenly Recordings in the UK, I OH YOU in Australia and Polydor. The 3AM (La La La) album came out via I OH YOU.

Can I see Confidence Man live in 2026?

Their 2026 run, as listed by aggregators, took in Kappa FuturFestival in Turin, HARD Summer in California and a reported London date at Burgess Park over the summer, with Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado on 16 October 2026 still to come. Confirm current dates on the band's official channels before travelling, as aggregator listings can drift.

Facts in this piece were checked against current sources in August 2026. If something has moved since, that is the nature of a living scene.