Synth Single Review: “Magnetized Witness’’ by The San Junipero Experience

The San Junipero Experience’s (Balazs Specker) Magnetized Witness is a journey back in time through a found VHS tape. Airy panpipe notes move along with gigantic drums and bass. Guitar howls out with passionate feeling before Balazs Specker calls out, filling his powerful voice with expression.

The colliding low end surges while glimmering notes intertwine around the vocals. Balazs Specker’s voice contains dramatic feeling as the panpipes ring out with windy breath. The guitar snarls in again, unwinding with deep feeling before Balazs Specker chants the vocals.

The drums and bass explode with muscled power as the chorus echoes. There's intensity in the vocals as they wind through the song. The guitar flares with explosive energy while the low end pushes on. Emotion fills the vocals as the song comes to an end with the flickering guitar dancing out above the drums and bass.

The narrator says that one morning he wanted to throw out some trash but instead he “accidentally collected someone else's at an unexpected place.” He adds that it has been put there “selectively, never been embraced.”

Our storyteller says that they're unwanted pictures of “times that fade away any way” like a message put in a bottle. His VCR plays the VHS he collected with no difficulty. He points out that he sees the other person's face but doesn't know who they are and hears their voice but “I read more from your eyes.”

The VHS tape is a “magnetized witness” to a beautiful soul as “polarized sadness” is knocking on his door. He hadn't seen the other person before but had “channeled to a memory of you.” He says that it's like a time machine that takes him back to 1991 and “the New York City I barely knew” as he watched the news with “the Gulf burning red.”

As the song ends he sees “magnetized sadness - reflection through the flames of wars.” He also sees the polarized sadness in this “lost tape of past hopes.”