Song Exploder Episode 187: Apparat – Goodbye

This episode from Song Exploder gives us a good insight in how Goodbye by Apparat came to be.

The Netflix original series Dark debuted in December 2017. It’s a really mysterious, mind-bending German science fiction show with a unique tone. A big part of that tone is announced every episode with the music in the show’s opening title sequence. It’s the song “Goodbye,” by German electronic artist Apparat, the solo project of Sascha Ring. This song actually came out years ago, on the 2011 Apparat album The Devil’s Walk. Since then, before it was used as the theme song for Dark, it’s been featured in a bunch of films and commercials, and notably, in the Season 4 finale of Breaking Bad.

Back in the day I was really delighted when I heard it in the Season 4 finale of Breaking Bad as it complemented the camerawork, montage, and story.

It is a bit of a pity that the track is now known only as “The theme from Dark”, taking away the focus from Apparat’s other work which is also really good. How good? Let me put it this way: his album “The Devil’s Walk” (featuring Goodbye) didn’t make it into my top 10 of played albums over time for no reason 😉

Automatically Fix Bluetooth Audio Balance Drift in macOS with “Balance Lock”

It’s been over 10 years that I’ve been using macOS (then OS X) and every now and then I notice that the audio balance of my Bluetooth headset is off for no apparent reason.


Hmm, why is the balance for my headphone suddenly off?

Back in 2014 I was lucky enough to see this tweet by Shaun Inman float by, in which he linked to a manual solution using macOS’s built-in Audio Midi Setup.app:

Ever since then I’ve been taking those manual steps to fix it whenever the issue occurred (which is quite often).

☝️ I know, you can also do it through the System Preferences nowadays. Back then that wasn’t the case though.

~

As I encountered the issue again today, I wondered if there was no automatic way to fixing this issue. Turns out there is, with the utility app Balance Lock

Headphones a little off or noticing your audio isn’t quite centered? Balance Lock will keep your audio centered and fix the annoying left/right drift bug.

It’s simple to use and runs in the background un-intrusively.

You can find Balance Lock for free on the App Store, or install it using mas

mas install 1019371109

Come on Apple, fix this longstanding bug or Sherlock the shit out of this app 😉

Balance Lock →

💁‍♂️ I’ve also added this handy tool to ./freshinstall, a tool which I built to automatically configure macOS (Preferences, Dotfiles, Installed Software, etc).

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Young Fathers – In My View

From their third album “Cocoa Sugar”, an album that already made it into my “2018 – Best Of” playlist — It’s that good! Listen to it here.

🎧 Be sure to also check out their other two albums if you’re new to Young Fathers. Their first album “Dead” amazed me back in 2014.

Joris Voorn 2016 Year Mix

One of the mixes that has been in my playlist ever since it was released:

Like every year, it’s not about the hits, just some great tunes from the last year and maybe even some classics that I’ve been playing a lot this year.

Joris Voorn 2016 Year Mix →

TIP: There’s a download button hidden underneath the “More…” dropdown when viewing this set on Soundcloud itself

Young Fathers – Dead

Yesterday I went to see alt-J together with @joggink at Vorst Nationaal. Whilst chatting up before and after the – truth be told – not that great concert (singing off key from the start, ORLY?) one of the topics, of course, was music.

During that talk I mentioned one of the, to me, musical revelations of 2014: Young Fathers. Their album “Dead” is one of the best albums of 2014. My last.fm stats tend to agree: 2nd most played artist the past 6 months.

I must admit the albums takes a while to grow on you. Please don’t discard it after the first few tracks, but be sure to also give “War”, “Get Up”, “Dip”, “Am I Not Your Boy”, and “I’ve Arrived” a listen.