"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.
TRACKS & TALES Guide Discover listening bars, lifestyle, and the stories.
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.
One record ends with a poet in London. The next begins with a fisherman in Kingston. Between them, a few seconds of silence, and eighteen years and an ocean that turn out to be shorter than they look.
Matthew Halsall's An Ever Changing View (2023) was written on the coast with a box of bells, seeds and chimes, then carried all the way to the Royal Albert Hall. Rafi Mercer on a record that hides its hand for a minute, then shows you Al...
Ryo Fukui's 1976 debut, recorded in Sapporo by a self-taught pianist six years into playing. Read through three moments, Curious, Special and Wow, it's the story of a record that never left home until the world came looking for it.
Wake Up Everybody (1975) by Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes: Teddy Pendergrass’s final album with the group, a Philadelphia soul classic produced by Gamble & Huff.
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.
By Rafi Mercer
If there is one place you can be alone in company then Tracks and Tales is that kinda place.
By Rafi Mercer
Not the loudest records, nor the fastest risers, but the albums readers returned to with intent this November— a chart shaped by curiosity, slow listening, and the quiet pull of lasting sound.
A red sleeve, a Sapporo piano trio, and the first morning of Tracks & Tales as a full-time job. Five promises about how to build it differently, kept to five...
A red sleeve, a Sapporo piano trio, and the first morning of Tracks & Tales as a full-time job. Five promises about how to build it differently, kept to five...
A fortnight before the fifty-second Friday letter, a record goes down before dawn and the year comes into focus. Not highlights, but ten things learnt about listening, writing to one...
A fortnight before the fifty-second Friday letter, a record goes down before dawn and the year comes into focus. Not highlights, but ten things learnt about listening, writing to one...
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.
