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
Discover Frankie's Jazz Club in Vancouver — an intimate downtown supper club where live jazz, Italian dining, and a room built for listening come together across seven nights a week.
Discover Frankie's Jazz Club in Vancouver — an intimate downtown supper club where live jazz, Italian dining, and a room built for listening come together across seven nights a week.
Discover La Gare / Le Gore in Paris — a former railway station where live jazz flows into deep electronic, creating one of the city’s most compelling listening experiences.
Discover La Gare / Le Gore in Paris — a former railway station where live jazz flows into deep electronic, creating one of the city’s most compelling listening experiences.
Bar Lis is a Hollywood rooftop venue where DJ-led programming and Riviera-inspired design create an energetic listening environment above Los Angeles. While more social than traditional listening bars, its curated...
Bar Lis is a Hollywood rooftop venue where DJ-led programming and Riviera-inspired design create an energetic listening environment above Los Angeles. While more social than traditional listening bars, its curated...
Every month, The Listening Club gathers around the world. Join here.
There is a moment near the start of Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia) where everything arrives at once. A 1964 piano groove, a trumpet, a rapper's improvised scat — and something clicks into place that no one had quite managed before. Hand on th...
This isn't an album that tries to impress you in the first five minutes. Kieran Hebden leaves the edges in, keeps the character of the fragments, and trusts you to stay with it. The ones who do get something back.
There are records you understand as they play. And then there are records that ask you to stay, even when you don't. Live at the Village Vanguard Again! is the second kind — music that doesn't open immediately, but rewards those who remain.
There is a particular kind of beginning that doesn't announce itself. No fanfare, no urgency — just a record placed on a turntable and a room that agrees to listen. Blues & the Abstract Truth is that beginning.
On June 25, 1961, Bill Evans, Scott LaFaro and Paul Motian played five sets at the Village Vanguard. Eleven days later, the trio ceased to exist. What they left behind is one of the most precise documents of what a piano actually sounds ...
In 1956, Jimmy Smith walked into Rudy Van Gelder's studio in Hackensack with a Hammond B-3 and two years of experience. What came out was Blue Note 1514 — a record that didn't just fill rooms. It pressurised them. Nearly seventy years la...
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
Not the loudest records, nor the fastest risers, but the albums readers returned to with intent this March — a chart shaped by curiosity, slow listening, and the quiet pull of lasting sound.
Every month, The Listening Club gathers around the world. Join here.
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 There is a moment, just before something becomes real, when it still feels like a private idea. A quiet thing. Something you return to, day after day,...
By Rafi Mercer There is a moment, just before something becomes real, when it still feels like a private idea. A quiet thing. Something you return to, day after day,...
Discover how Singapore is tuning into Tracks & Tales — not as a city, but as a system — signalling deeper recognition in the age of AI and slow listening.
Discover how Singapore is tuning into Tracks & Tales — not as a city, but as a system — signalling deeper recognition in the age of AI and slow listening.
Discover the quiet shift between hearing and listening — and how a global community is choosing attention over convenience, one record at a time.
Discover the quiet shift between hearing and listening — and how a global community is choosing attention over convenience, one record at a time.
It started as a question about where music sounds right. It turns out that question translates. Tracks & Tales is now available to read in three languages — and the...
It started as a question about where music sounds right. It turns out that question translates. Tracks & Tales is now available to read in three languages — and the...
Rafi Mercer explains the thinking behind the Tracks & Tales Star — how we listen, choose, and award.
