A phone rings, a voice speaks in French, and the past refuses to hang up. The San Junipero Experience from Budapest built their latest single, Two Worlds Apart, around voice messages left between two lovers who can no longer reach each other.
The band describe it as “an 80s-inspired synth-pop track about lovers trapped between memory and reality”, with French voice messages, soaring hooks and atmospheric production. The single came out on 3 September 2026 together with an official video on the band’s YouTube channel.
The name comes from San Junipero, the Black Mirror episode set in a simulated 1980s town. The project began as Balázs Specker’s one-man 80s retrowave-pop outfit and was picked up by Aztec Records after just two songs. Over the past year it has grown into a band.
Gergely Kabai (bass and keys) and Péter Erdélyi (guitar) joined Specker, and Zsuzsi Szabó, formerly of Nouvelle Phénomène, became the band’s female voice. Saxophonist Gábor Lampert sits in on several songs.
With the band came shared songwriting. Kabai composed Two Worlds Apart, Szabó and Specker wrote the words, and Szabó speaks the French parts. Hungarian blog Recorder heard strong Giorgio Moroder influences and an echo of the English-French concept of Visage’s new wave.
The B-side, Voyage, is a faster take on the 1980s hit Voyage, Voyage, with a video made from footage of the Voyager space probe.
Budapest fans can hear it live on Friday 27 November 2026 at Neon Indie Night in Vörös Neon on Dob utca, where The San Junipero Experience share the bill with WHY WHY and The Neverlandings. The venue calls them perhaps Hungary’s only feel-good synthwave-pop band.
Bandcamp – https://thesanjuniperoexperience.bandcamp.com/album/two-worlds-apart
Voyage video – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXVc5gbkQUs
Neon Indie Night – https://vorosneon.hu/szinhaz-eloadas/neon-indie-night/
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