A guide to cities, bars, experiences, and places to stay chosen for how they sound. “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. But where sound is treated with care — rooms designed to listen, systems tuned with intention, and music given the time it deserves. Think of it as the Michelin Guide to Listening — if such a thing existed. I travel, listen, return, and write. The rest is the map you can now explore.” Every month, The Listening Club gathers around the world. Join here. — Rafi Mercer, Founder of Tracks & Tales
Andalusia is one of those places that makes you slow down without asking permission. The days start late, the evenings stretch on, and people seem to understand something many places...
Andalusia is one of those places that makes you slow down without asking permission. The days start late, the evenings stretch on, and people seem to understand something many places...
There is something about Oklahoma City that feels larger than the map suggests. Perhaps it is the sky. Perhaps it is the distance. Perhaps it is the way sound seems...
There is something about Oklahoma City that feels larger than the map suggests. Perhaps it is the sky. Perhaps it is the distance. Perhaps it is the way sound seems...
This is not a city that announces itself loudly. It arrives in layers: the Pacific moving against the rocks, the old industrial memory of Cannery Row, the literary shadow of...
This is not a city that announces itself loudly. It arrives in layers: the Pacific moving against the rocks, the old industrial memory of Cannery Row, the literary shadow of...
It does not unfold like Bath or Edinburgh. It does not market itself endlessly through nostalgia or architecture or reinvention campaigns. Wolverhampton has always carried itself more directly than that.
It does not unfold like Bath or Edinburgh. It does not market itself endlessly through nostalgia or architecture or reinvention campaigns. Wolverhampton has always carried itself more directly than that.
Long before playlists became portable and music travelled invisibly through the air, this was a city of ships, crossings and departures. The Atlantic begins to make itself felt here.
Long before playlists became portable and music travelled invisibly through the air, this was a city of ships, crossings and departures. The Atlantic begins to make itself felt here.
Baltimore is a city that carries its history openly. You feel it in the brick rowhouses climbing long streets toward the horizon.
Baltimore is a city that carries its history openly. You feel it in the brick rowhouses climbing long streets toward the horizon.
There are cities built around memory, and cities built around the future. Santa Clara somehow exists between the two.
There are cities built around memory, and cities built around the future. Santa Clara somehow exists between the two.
Vancouver listens differently. Between mountains and ocean, the city has developed a music culture that is quiet, considered, and quietly serious — from the jazz rooms of downtown to Lala,...
Vancouver listens differently. Between mountains and ocean, the city has developed a music culture that is quiet, considered, and quietly serious — from the jazz rooms of downtown to Lala,...
Every month, The Listening Club gathers around the world. Join here.
Thievery Corporation's 1996 debut arrived at a moment when electronic music was multiplying into tribes. They ignored all of it. Sounds from the Thievery Hi-Fi drew from dub, jazz and Brazilian music and made them coexist as if they'd al...
By 1976, Herbie Hancock had little left to prove. Head Hunters had become one of the most successful jazz albums ever made. Thrust and Man-Child had pushed jazz, funk and electronics into exciting new territory. The expectation might hav...
There are albums that announce themselves immediately, and there are albums that slowly become part of your life. Protection has lives with me...
There are albums that announce themselves immediately. Big openings. Big statements. Records that want you to understand their importance within the first thirty seconds. Return to Forever does the opposite.
Released in 1992, after the death of Miles Davis, Doo-Bop remains one of the most divisive records in his catalogue. Some dismissed it immediately. Others treated it like an unfinished experiment.
There was a period of life where you rarely knew exactly where you were heading, but you felt more alive because of it. Leftism still sounds like that world — motorway lights, basslines, exhaustion, and the strange freedom of losing the ...
In 1987, CHANEL created its first watch for women: the PREMIÈRE, inspired by the codes of the House. Its octagonal case evokes the stopper of the N°5 perfume bottle. The original bracelet, interlaced with leather—like the chain of the iconic quilted bag—has been reinterpreted in chain, ceramic or velvet-finish ribbon versions. A timeless, feminine timepiece to slip on your wrist day and night.
By Rafi Mercer
Miles Davis didn't just make music — he showed us how to move differently through the world. We hold that thinking very close everyday.
By Rafi Mercer
Not the loudest records, nor the fastest risers, but the albums readers returned to with intent this June — a chart shaped by curiosity, slow listening, and the quiet pull of lasting sound.
Tracks & Tales has reached fifty thousand visitors. Not customers. Not users. People — each one arriving from somewhere else, each one searching for something. A reflection on building slowly,...
Tracks & Tales has reached fifty thousand visitors. Not customers. Not users. People — each one arriving from somewhere else, each one searching for something. A reflection on building slowly,...
Tracks & Tales is about to welcome its 50,000th visitor. I know that sounds like a number, but it doesn't feel like one. When I look at the traffic, I...
Tracks & Tales is about to welcome its 50,000th visitor. I know that sounds like a number, but it doesn't feel like one. When I look at the traffic, I...
Lately I keep finding myself pulled deeper into jazz recorded between 1970 and 1975. Why that period exactly, I honestly don’t know. Maybe because everything still sounded like discovery.
Lately I keep finding myself pulled deeper into jazz recorded between 1970 and 1975. Why that period exactly, I honestly don’t know. Maybe because everything still sounded like discovery.
This week would have marked 100 years of Miles Davis. And the older I get, the more I realise Miles wasn’t simply making music. He was defending attention.
This week would have marked 100 years of Miles Davis. And the older I get, the more I realise Miles wasn’t simply making music. He was defending attention.
Rafi Mercer explains the thinking behind the Tracks & Tales Star — how we listen, choose, and award.
