"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.
Mojo's Vinyl Bar in Highwood, Illinois, has 5,000+ records guests can queue themselves, a Klipsch La Scala sound system, rare whiskeys and live music nights.
Mojo's Vinyl Bar in Highwood, Illinois, has 5,000+ records guests can queue themselves, a Klipsch La Scala sound system, rare whiskeys and live music nights.
A sushi counter once held this room in Ohio City. Now a McIntosh system, full album sides and cocktails named for songs fill it, and the record sets the pace...
A sushi counter once held this room in Ohio City. Now a McIntosh system, full album sides and cocktails named for songs fill it, and the record sets the pace...
Three floors above the lighting wholesalers of Euljiro 3-ga, Clique Records has spent eleven years hanging dance records like prints and selling them to people who mean to play them....
Three floors above the lighting wholesalers of Euljiro 3-ga, Clique Records has spent eleven years hanging dance records like prints and selling them to people who mean to play them....
St. Lui is a new vinyl listening bar on Cashel Street, Christchurch, with a hi-fi system, acoustic panelling, a fire and full-album plays from the owners’ collection.
St. Lui is a new vinyl listening bar on Cashel Street, Christchurch, with a hi-fi system, acoustic panelling, a fire and full-album plays from the owners’ collection.
DJ Bar Bridge Shibuya is a tenth-floor DJ bar overlooking Shibuya Crossing, with a Rey Audio sound system, long-running resident DJs, a ¥1,000 door and hours of 8pm–5am.
DJ Bar Bridge Shibuya is a tenth-floor DJ bar overlooking Shibuya Crossing, with a Rey Audio sound system, long-running resident DJs, a ¥1,000 door and hours of 8pm–5am.
Maru Hi-Fi is a jazz kissa-inspired listening bar in Newcastle West, NSW, with a 10,000-record collection, Tannoy Westminster speakers, live jazz and BYO Records nights.
Maru Hi-Fi is a jazz kissa-inspired listening bar in Newcastle West, NSW, with a 10,000-record collection, Tannoy Westminster speakers, live jazz and BYO Records nights.
TRACKS & TALES
This book doesn't tell you what to listen to. It teaches you how to listen again.
New orders ship daily worldwide.
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.
Belle and Sebastian's third album is the moment Stuart Murdoch's private world became a band. Shared vocals, bagpipes, a stage-invasion title track and sad songs set to bright tunes. Rafi Mercer on why The Boy With The Arab Strap still r...
Dwayne Kilvington has spent twenty years as the musician other musicians call. Mek Do & Mend gathers fifteen years of his writing, the voices of the people who raised him, and a single live day at RAK into one long exposure of a life.
Thirty songs, four sides, and a band coming apart in separate rooms. The White Album is too long, out of control and impossible to tidy, and that's exactly why it rewards sitting through all ninety minutes.
Most charts count arrivals. This one counts staying. A hundred records from the album reviews, ranked by the total time readers gave each one across a full year. Not views. Not clicks. Minutes.
Blue Brazil wears the Blue Note logo but holds none of its sessions. Compiled by London DJ Joe Davis from EMI-Odeon's Brazilian vaults in 1994, it's a record built by selectors for rooms, and one that still fills them.
Grace Jones's Nightclubbing is remembered as one of the great album covers and heard far less often than it is seen. Take the image away and what's left is a rhythm section record built at Compass Point by Sly and Robbie, mixed for peopl...
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 October— a chart shaped by curiosity, slow listening, and the quiet pull of lasting sound.
The clocks go back on Sunday, and the Listening Club gathers on the same day. For once the calendar gives something back. The question is what to do with it.
The clocks go back on Sunday, and the Listening Club gathers on the same day. For once the calendar gives something back. The question is what to do with it.
Six sessions in, choosing the seventh record turned into a battle. Byrd, Sanders, Davis, Hathaway, Eno and Jones each changed what a Listening Club session can be, and the next...
Six sessions in, choosing the seventh record turned into a battle. Byrd, Sanders, Davis, Hathaway, Eno and Jones each changed what a Listening Club session can be, and the next...
A Swedish newspaper asked how Tracks & Tales began. Somewhere in the answers I wrote that the Listening Club had members in eleven countries. It's fifteen now, and the membership...
A Swedish newspaper asked how Tracks & Tales began. Somewhere in the answers I wrote that the Listening Club had members in eleven countries. It's fifteen now, and the membership...
