The 100 records that are worth your time
Most charts count arrivals. This one counts staying. A hundred records from the album reviews, ranked by the total time readers gave each one across a full year. Not views. Not clicks. Minutes.
A note from Rafi Mercer
"I started Tracks & Tales to answer a simple question: where does music actually sound right? Not where it's loudest. Not where it's trendiest. Where sound is treated with care — rooms designed for listening, systems tuned with intention, music given the time it deserves. Think of it as the Michelin Guide to Listening — if such a thing existed. A guide to cities, bars, and places to stay, chosen for how they sound. The rest is the map, and it's yours to explore." — Rafi Mercer, Founder
The Latest Listening Venues Not To Be Missed.
More Reads From Tracks & Tales-
Hi-Fi Disco Bar Chaos — Maruyamacho's Permissio...
Maruyamacho climbs. Walk west out of Shibuya and the ground lifts you through a district that has spent decades in the business of discretion, love hotels shoulder to shoulder, their...
Hi-Fi Disco Bar Chaos — Maruyamacho's Permissio...
Maruyamacho climbs. Walk west out of Shibuya and the ground lifts you through a district that has spent decades in the business of discretion, love hotels shoulder to shoulder, their...
-
Stylus Soundlounge — Charlotte, North Carolina
Stylus Soundlounge in Charlotte, NC — a disco-noir listening room at The Pass built around a collector's vintage analogue system, with Host Selectors Wednesday to Saturday. A Tracks & Tales...
Stylus Soundlounge — Charlotte, North Carolina
Stylus Soundlounge in Charlotte, NC — a disco-noir listening room at The Pass built around a collector's vintage analogue system, with Host Selectors Wednesday to Saturday. A Tracks & Tales...
-
Bonsai HiFi — Cali, Colombia
Bonsai HiFi is a small bar de escucha on Calle 2 in Cali, Colombia — vinyl, deep house and melodic techno in the world's salsa capital. A Tracks & Tales...
Bonsai HiFi — Cali, Colombia
Bonsai HiFi is a small bar de escucha on Calle 2 in Cali, Colombia — vinyl, deep house and melodic techno in the world's salsa capital. A Tracks & Tales...
-
Baroke Mumbai — One Floor Above a Road That Los...
Baroke in Grant Road is Mumbai's first vinyl-only listening bar — over 200 records, Klipsch La Scala II speakers, and no digital fallback. A Tracks & Tales venue listing.
Baroke Mumbai — One Floor Above a Road That Los...
Baroke in Grant Road is Mumbai's first vinyl-only listening bar — over 200 records, Klipsch La Scala II speakers, and no digital fallback. A Tracks & Tales venue listing.
-
Dill Pickle Club: Vinyl, Reel-to-Reel, and Tasm...
Tooker Alley was a short lane off Dearborn Street in Chicago's Near North Side, and for most of the 1920s the loudest room on it was a converted stable where...
Dill Pickle Club: Vinyl, Reel-to-Reel, and Tasm...
Tooker Alley was a short lane off Dearborn Street in Chicago's Near North Side, and for most of the 1920s the loudest room on it was a converted stable where...
-
The SoundBar OKC — A Living Room on Broadway
The SoundBar OKC — Oklahoma City's vinyl lounge on N Broadway Ave, with a serious sound system, drink-and-record pairings, and 12,000 albums to browse and buy.
The SoundBar OKC — A Living Room on Broadway
The SoundBar OKC — Oklahoma City's vinyl lounge on N Broadway Ave, with a serious sound system, drink-and-record pairings, and 12,000 albums to browse and buy.
TRACKS & TALES
The Luxury of Listening - A book by Rafi Mercer
This book doesn't tell you what to listen to. It teaches you how to listen again.
New orders ship daily worldwide.
Regular price
£41.00 GBP
Regular price
Sale price
£41.00 GBP
Unit price
per
Taxes included.
The Listening Club:
We traded our attention for convenience.
Endless playlists. Infinite skipping. Music became something that happens while we do something else.
The Listening Club is a quiet rebellion against that.
One album a month. All the way through. Together.
Founding membership is capped at 200 members worldwide. When the places are taken, this tier closes permanently.
Hello · Hallo · Bonjour · Ciao · Hola · Hallo · Olá · Hej · こんにちは · 你好
Every month, The Listening Club gathers around the world. Join here.
The Listening Albums, Innovation & Tradition.
-
-
Blue Brazil — Various Artists (1994)
Blue Brazil wears the Blue Note logo but holds none of its sessions. Compiled by London DJ Joe Davis from EMI-Odeon's Brazilian vaults in 1994, it's a record built by selectors for rooms, and one that still fills them.
-
Nightclubbing — Grace Jones (1981)
Grace Jones's Nightclubbing is remembered as one of the great album covers and heard far less often than it is seen. Take the image away and what's left is a rhythm section record built at Compass Point by Sly and Robbie, mixed for peopl...
-
Dance, No One's Watching — Ezra Collective (2024)
Ezra Collective's third album was recorded at Abbey Road in the days after Notting Hill Carnival, with friends and family filling the studio so the band wouldn't have to play alone. Nineteen tracks, built as a single night out. A record ...
-
Le Pas du Chat Noir — Anouar Brahem (2002)
Recorded eight weeks before the towers and released a year after, Le Pas du Chat Noir is a Tunisian oud player's chamber music for piano and accordion — the least likely trio in Europe, made at exactly the moment Europe stopped wanting t...
-
Yabun — Meitei (2018)
Meitei's first record, self-released in early 2018 and almost entirely unheard at the time. Five pieces, eighteen minutes, built from field recordings he made himself and pushed through tape — the seed of everything the "lost Japanese mo...
Worldwide Neighbourhood Guides.
At Home Listening, How & Why.
The Power of Going away.
By Rafi Mercer
What Sade understood about absence, trust, and the quiet courage to disappear.
The September 100 — Albums People Stayed With.
By Rafi Mercer
Not the loudest records, nor the fastest risers, but the albums readers returned to with intent this September— a chart shaped by curiosity, slow listening, and the quiet pull of lasting sound.
The Daily Journal. Discover More.
More Reads From Tracks & Tales-
The Long Track
A September traffic queue, an Electribe 101 record put on for no good reason, and a title track that wouldn't end. Was it nostalgia, or just being trapped? Rafi Mercer...
The Long Track
A September traffic queue, an Electribe 101 record put on for no good reason, and a title track that wouldn't end. Was it nostalgia, or just being trapped? Rafi Mercer...
-
Nobody Left
Every rule in digital publishing says a two-thousand-word email about a single record should cost you readers. This one didn't cost a single member, and a few people wrote back....
Nobody Left
Every rule in digital publishing says a two-thousand-word email about a single record should cost you readers. This one didn't cost a single member, and a few people wrote back....
-
The Letter I Kept
A letter arrived a few days before Christmas, at the end of twelve years at Virgin, and it went into a drawer. Forty-two weeks ago I started writing letters of...
The Letter I Kept
A letter arrived a few days before Christmas, at the end of twelve years at Virgin, and it went into a drawer. Forty-two weeks ago I started writing letters of...
