A guide to cities, venues, 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 sound — if such a thing existed. I travel, listen, return, and write. The rest is the map you can now explore.” — Rafi Mercer, Founder of Tracks & Tales
Kozy Listening Bar is not a place you visit for background music. It is a room that asks you to lean in — to feel the warmth of vinyl, the...
Kozy Listening Bar is not a place you visit for background music. It is a room that asks you to lean in — to feel the warmth of vinyl, the...
A vinyl-led listening bar tucked into Melbourne’s Meyers Place, LB’s Record Bar blends late-night cocktails, local DJs, and a social approach to sound where records quietly lead the room.
A vinyl-led listening bar tucked into Melbourne’s Meyers Place, LB’s Record Bar blends late-night cocktails, local DJs, and a social approach to sound where records quietly lead the room.
Bar Orai is a vinyl-led listening bar in Midtown East, New York City, offering a rare pocket of focus and warmth where records are allowed to unfold with patience and...
Bar Orai is a vinyl-led listening bar in Midtown East, New York City, offering a rare pocket of focus and warmth where records are allowed to unfold with patience and...
Music For a While is a vinyl-led listening bar in New York City, offering a rare space of patience, warmth, and collective attention where records are allowed to unfold without...
Music For a While is a vinyl-led listening bar in New York City, offering a rare space of patience, warmth, and collective attention where records are allowed to unfold without...
TRACKS & TALES
In a Britain braced for economic tightening and cultural change, Reggatta de Blanc chose discipline over drama. Its bass lines lead without shouting, its drums carve space rather than fill it, and its cool restraint still feels like a ma...
Return of the Boom Bap doesn’t try to impress you. It stands still and lets the drums speak first. The snare is dry, exact. The bassline anchors rather than decorates. And KRS-One’s voice sits squarely in the centre — not shouting for at...
Some albums fade once their moment passes. The Score does the opposite. Return to it now and it feels larger, calmer, more assured — a record that didn’t age, but waited.
Garbarek doesn’t play over the voices — he listens into them. The room becomes the instrument, and silence the final collaborator.
Le Trio Joubran doesn’t play at you — it plays with itself, three voices moving like one mind. The oud arrives like a memory from a previous world, but the feeling is immediate: patient, tactile, quietly electric. This is music that make...
Blue Maqams sounds like a voice carried forward through centuries, arriving quietly in the present. The oud speaks without urgency, asking you to slow your breathing, to listen past habit, until time itself seems to loosen its grip.
Tracks & Tales runs on curiosity and caffeine. One coffee at a time keeps the stories and soundscapes flowing.
By Rafi Mercer
Listening is a quiet luxury. A reflection on why sharing music without expectation has become one of the most generous acts we can offer each other—and why attention now matters more than ever.
By Rafi Mercer
From rare jazz to warm electronica and late-night soul, these are the records that unfold with time — chosen for their depth, their detail, and the way they shape a room.
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.
I saw KRS-One in Sheffield in 1991 — two years before the record I’m thinking about this morning even existed. That’s what stays with me. Not the catalogue, not the...
I saw KRS-One in Sheffield in 1991 — two years before the record I’m thinking about this morning even existed. That’s what stays with me. Not the catalogue, not the...
Some instruments don’t arrive on time — they arrive when you’re ready. The oud doesn’t rush you forward; it pulls you gently backward, until listening feels whole again.
Some instruments don’t arrive on time — they arrive when you’re ready. The oud doesn’t rush you forward; it pulls you gently backward, until listening feels whole again.
A brand doesn’t earn the right to grow by expanding quickly, but by staying useful in someone’s life. Virgin understood this early: records came first, then tapes, then spaces, each...
A brand doesn’t earn the right to grow by expanding quickly, but by staying useful in someone’s life. Virgin understood this early: records came first, then tapes, then spaces, each...
Some ideas resist scale by design. A few chairs, a living room, a record played with care. This one isn’t trying to grow fast or reach far — it’s trying...
Some ideas resist scale by design. A few chairs, a living room, a record played with care. This one isn’t trying to grow fast or reach far — it’s trying...
Rafi Mercer explains the thinking behind the Tracks & Tales Star — how we listen, choose, and award.
