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
"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
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...
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 — 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 — 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.
Memphis Listening Lab at Crosstown Concourse — a free public listening library with 75,000 recordings, a reference-grade SoundRoom, and regular listening events. The T&T guide to Memphis's civic listening room.
Memphis Listening Lab at Crosstown Concourse — a free public listening library with 75,000 recordings, a reference-grade SoundRoom, and regular listening events. The T&T guide to Memphis's civic listening room.
There is an old truth about record shops that the best ones have always understood: the shop is not really selling records. It is selling the moment before ownership —...
There is an old truth about record shops that the best ones have always understood: the shop is not really selling records. It is selling the moment before ownership —...
There are certain corners of Milan where the city seems to exhale. The pace softens. The sharp lines of business, fashion and commerce loosen into something more conversational.
There are certain corners of Milan where the city seems to exhale. The pace softens. The sharp lines of business, fashion and commerce loosen into something more conversational.
A city like Milan thrives on intersections: fashion and design, food and culture, tradition and reinvention. Gesto feels like a product of that same instinct. The records matter, but so...
A city like Milan thrives on intersections: fashion and design, food and culture, tradition and reinvention. Gesto feels like a product of that same instinct. The records matter, but so...
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.
Every month, The Listening Club gathers around the world. Join here.
The Beastie Boys had every reason to repeat themselves and chose instead to dismantle the version of themselves that worked. Paul's Boutique is what happened next: over a hundred records playing at once, a jazz drummer from New Orleans h...
In Vietnam, "the World" meant home. Curtis Mayfield released Back to the World in May 1973, weeks after the last men came back — and wrote not about the war but about the arrival. Plush strings, congas, and the bleakest lyrics in America...
You could walk past it. That is the point. On Jalan Labuansait, the road that carries everyone down towards Bingin and the surf, The Analog sits between a surf shop and a Pilates studio with nothing out front to announce itself.
At twenty-five, Café del Mar skipped the retrospective. Three discs, nearly four hours, almost all new music from the bar's own independent label — smooth to a fault, honest to its purpose, and best understood not as an album but as a du...
Recorded in three spring weeks in 1977 with Ryuichi Sakamoto arranging and half of Japan's musical future in the room, Taeko Ohnuki's second album sold almost nothing — then waited forty years to become one of the most sought-after Japan...
Made in a twenty-mile triangle of Yorkshire studios and sounding like everywhere warm on earth, Smokers Delight is the record that taught a generation how to slow down. Built on inherited soul — its opening track answers a Quincy Jones a...
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.
I did not go to the gym intending to listen to hip hop. But before my mind had chosen anything, my body found its way back to beats. Perhaps the...
I did not go to the gym intending to listen to hip hop. But before my mind had chosen anything, my body found its way back to beats. Perhaps the...
A year ago there was no site — only a question that refused to leave: do people really know how to listen? Twelve months, 171 countries, and one Listening Club...
A year ago there was no site — only a question that refused to leave: do people really know how to listen? Twelve months, 171 countries, and one Listening Club...
The session is done — two Technics 1210s, a Linn Classik, nine records spanning 1939 to 2004, and one album at the centre I'm not naming until Sunday. The arc...
The session is done — two Technics 1210s, a Linn Classik, nine records spanning 1939 to 2004, and one album at the centre I'm not naming until Sunday. The arc...
