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 Salvador’s listening culture through Afro-Brazilian rhythm, street percussion, dancing, and communal sound. A Tracks & Tales guide to one of the world’s most alive musical cities.
Discover Salvador’s listening culture through Afro-Brazilian rhythm, street percussion, dancing, and communal sound. A Tracks & Tales guide to one of the world’s most alive musical cities.
Discover Saint-Germain-des-Prés listening bars and Left Bank sound culture — café memory, Paris jazz, literary rooms and the slow rhythm of attentive listening.
Discover Saint-Germain-des-Prés listening bars and Left Bank sound culture — café memory, Paris jazz, literary rooms and the slow rhythm of attentive listening.
Hanoi listens differently. Beneath the scooters and voices, Vietnam's capital moves to a quieter cadence — one shaped by strong coffee, low-volume jazz, and intimate rooms where a record spins...
Hanoi listens differently. Beneath the scooters and voices, Vietnam's capital moves to a quieter cadence — one shaped by strong coffee, low-volume jazz, and intimate rooms where a record spins...
Every month, The Listening Club gathers around the world. Join here.
Most people know Kool & The Gang for the celebration — the big choruses, the global crossover. But Light of Worlds, released in 1974, belongs to a different band altogether. The exploratory version. Still searching. And Summer Madnes...
Maybe that strange journey from thoughts of Salvador to Paul Desmond was not strange at all in the end. Music does this sometimes. One rhythm opens another door. A samba pulse in Brazil somehow finding its way into a cool New York jazz s...
Discover why Fred again..’s Actual Life became one of the defining emotional albums of modern electronic music — a warm, intimate soundtrack for fragmented modern life, memory, hope, and human connection.
Discover why Serge Gainsbourg's No. 4 still feels like the sound of France itself — a slow, intimate 1962 record filled with jazz, memory, atmosphere, and the emotional rhythm of another era.
The tape runs at the wrong speed, and somehow that becomes the truest thing about it. This is not the finished version of an artist — it is the moment just before that version is decided.
Music that doesn't arrive finished — it becomes · Tony Williams, Blue Note, and the record that changed the role of the drummer · A record still forming itself, sixty years later.
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 May — 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.
The next Listening Club gathers around one album, played in full. But between its tracks, something else arrives — Sakamoto, Massive Attack, Radiohead, The xx — not as context, but...
The next Listening Club gathers around one album, played in full. But between its tracks, something else arrives — Sakamoto, Massive Attack, Radiohead, The xx — not as context, but...
Every Friday at 4PM GMT, a small group of people around the world stop scrolling long enough to hear themselves think again.
Every Friday at 4PM GMT, a small group of people around the world stop scrolling long enough to hear themselves think again.
Discover how Tracks & Tales grew from a simple idea — two coffees, one record, and the belief that listening might still connect people across the world.
Discover how Tracks & Tales grew from a simple idea — two coffees, one record, and the belief that listening might still connect people across the world.
At four in the morning the world feels less convinced of itself. The noise drops away. Even the algorithms seem asleep for a few hours. And somewhere between darkness and...
At four in the morning the world feels less convinced of itself. The noise drops away. Even the algorithms seem asleep for a few hours. And somewhere between darkness and...
Rafi Mercer explains the thinking behind the Tracks & Tales Star — how we listen, choose, and award.
