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
To the north sits Oakland. Across the bay rises San Francisco. Silicon Valley lies further south. Yet San Leandro has never seemed particularly interested in competing with any of them....
To the north sits Oakland. Across the bay rises San Francisco. Silicon Valley lies further south. Yet San Leandro has never seemed particularly interested in competing with any of them....
To one side rise the dramatic peaks of the Wasatch Mountains. To the other stretches the vast basin landscape that leads towards the Great Salt Lake and the deserts beyond....
To one side rise the dramatic peaks of the Wasatch Mountains. To the other stretches the vast basin landscape that leads towards the Great Salt Lake and the deserts beyond....
Drive north from the city and the landscape gradually changes. The roads become more winding. The horizon becomes more textured. Trees replace concrete. The foothills of the Appalachians begin to...
Drive north from the city and the landscape gradually changes. The roads become more winding. The horizon becomes more textured. Trees replace concrete. The foothills of the Appalachians begin to...
Once known primarily for textiles and manufacturing, it now feels like one of the American South's most compelling urban success stories. Historic mill buildings have found new purpose. Tree-lined streets...
Once known primarily for textiles and manufacturing, it now feels like one of the American South's most compelling urban success stories. Historic mill buildings have found new purpose. Tree-lined streets...
In the northeastern corner of North Dakota, where the Red River marks the border with Minnesota, the landscape seems to expand in every direction at once. There are no mountains...
In the northeastern corner of North Dakota, where the Red River marks the border with Minnesota, the landscape seems to expand in every direction at once. There are no mountains...
Spend enough time here and you begin to notice a slower rhythm hidden beneath the sunshine and tourism. Early mornings along the Intracoastal Waterway. The hush before restaurants fill for...
Spend enough time here and you begin to notice a slower rhythm hidden beneath the sunshine and tourism. Early mornings along the Intracoastal Waterway. The hush before restaurants fill for...
Nestled among the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina, just east of Asheville, it occupies a landscape where nature remains impossible to ignore. The mountains rise on every horizon....
Nestled among the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina, just east of Asheville, it occupies a landscape where nature remains impossible to ignore. The mountains rise on every horizon....
A city where culture arrives slowly and stays a while. By Rafi Mercer Some cities are built around industry. Others are built around movement. Saratoga Springs was built around arrival....
A city where culture arrives slowly and stays a while. By Rafi Mercer Some cities are built around industry. Others are built around movement. Saratoga Springs was built around arrival....
Every month, The Listening Club gathers around the world. Join here.
Laura Misch's second album trades the open sky of her debut for caves, quarries and coastlines — a record built from breath, stone, and the patience of deep time. It asks you to slow down, and means it.
I first heard Victorialand properly on an ordinary afternoon. No ceremony. No expectation. The sort of day where a record is chosen almost absent-mindedly, simply because it is there. What followed was not so much listening as drifting.
Saudade does not ask for your attention. It waits for it. Thievery Corporation's most cohesive and quietly ambitious album trades trip-hop for bossa nova, creating a world of longing, memory, and warm midnight air that only reveals itsel...
People know the track. Listeners know the album. Take Five may be one of the most recognisable pieces of jazz ever recorded, but the real adventure of Time Out begins elsewhere. Start with Blue Rondo à la Turk and a different record reve...
There are albums that announce themselves immediately. Albums that stride into the room, shake your hand, and make certain you know they have arrived. Then there is Ascenseur pour l'échafaud.
Some albums arrive at exactly the right moment. Somewhere between Copenhagen, Amsterdam and the long journey home, Dimitri From Paris Presents Le Chic Remix became less a remix album and more a reminder that the best music doesn't demand...
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
What Sade understood about absence, trust, and the quiet courage to disappear.
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.
There was a time when I thought progress looked like movement. More meetings. More plans. More ideas. More miles travelled. More things started. Like many people, I spent years believing...
There was a time when I thought progress looked like movement. More meetings. More plans. More ideas. More miles travelled. More things started. Like many people, I spent years believing...
A reflection on anticipation, vinyl records, and the quiet days before a listening session — when parcels, possibility, and the music itself are still making their way towards the room.
A reflection on anticipation, vinyl records, and the quiet days before a listening session — when parcels, possibility, and the music itself are still making their way towards the room.
Some numbers arrive quietly — on a Sunday, between other tasks — and only afterward do you understand what they mean. A reflection on building something simple, the long unglamorous...
Some numbers arrive quietly — on a Sunday, between other tasks — and only afterward do you understand what they mean. A reflection on building something simple, the long unglamorous...
A quiet reflection from Amsterdam Airport on why listening and hearing are not the same thing, and why attention may be the rarest gift we can offer one another.
A quiet reflection from Amsterdam Airport on why listening and hearing are not the same thing, and why attention may be the rarest gift we can offer one another.
Rafi Mercer explains the thinking behind the Tracks & Tales Star — how we listen, choose, and award.
