The Focus of Sound — Building the Michelin Guide to Listening
When someone called Tracks & Tales the “Michelin Guide to sound,” it set the tone for a mission. We reflect on the power of music to focus purpose — and how listening is building something quietly remarkable.
By Rafi Mercer
There are moments when a phrase changes everything.
For me, it was the day someone said, “You’re building the Michelin Guide to sound.”
It wasn’t meant as a slogan — it was an observation. But I felt it like a chord. A single line that tuned the entire project. Suddenly Tracks & Tales wasn’t just a collection of essays or a growing atlas of listening bars; it became a mission. To map the world through the way it listens. To recognise the same care in sound that Michelin once gave to food.
It’s a grand idea — almost too big — but that’s precisely what makes it worth pursuing. Because listening, when done well, reveals what’s truly alive in culture. The venues, the cities, the people who make sound feel meaningful. And like any guide worth its ink, it takes patience. Michelin didn’t arrive fully formed; it took decades of care, travel, and refinement. We’re doing the same — slowly, but somehow at speed.
Music has always been the focus mechanism of my life. It sharpens attention, clarifies intent. When I’m building this atlas, I work to a kind of rhythm — albums, field recordings, city sounds — and each helps me remember what this really is: an act of listening disguised as publishing. The writing, the scouting, the long nights of fact-checking owner names and turntable specs — all of it flows better when the right music is on.
There’s a track by Brian Eno called “An Ending (Ascent)” that I often play while building the map. It reminds me that this isn’t a race; it’s a composition. You start with one note — one venue, one essay, one small story — and then you listen for what follows. Growth doesn’t have to be loud to be fast. Sometimes the quietest movements travel furthest.
What we’re building now — this guide to sound, this living map of listening — is the kind of challenge that demands focus over frenzy. It’s about rhythm, not rush. The numbers rise each week — new readers, new venues, first revenue — but what matters most is the tone of it all. The sense that people are joining in because they can hear the care in the work.
The Michelin comparison has stayed with me because it asks for integrity. Michelin stars were never about popularity; they were about precision, about showing that taste could be measured not by noise but by nuance. That’s the same challenge we face in sound. To prove that listening — in bars, hotels, homes, or headphones — can be judged with the same care we give to food or art.
It won’t be quick. But it’s happening quickly. The atlas grows one room at a time, one listener at a time. Each essay another page in a global guide that doesn’t just review — it reveals.
Focus is a discipline of listening. And that’s what this work really is: the long act of learning to hear the world properly, then finding the right words to match.
Quick Questions
What does “Michelin Guide to sound” mean?
It’s the ambition to map the world’s best listening experiences — venues, bars, hotels — with the same care Michelin applied to food.
Why is focus so important to Tracks & Tales?
Because sound rewards attention. This project grows by listening deeply, not by moving fast. Every venue, essay, and city page is part of one continuous composition.
How is the vision progressing?
Quietly and quickly. The guide is expanding week by week, powered by readers, scouts, and the rhythm of shared discovery — one sound, one story at a time.
Rafi Mercer writes about the spaces where music matters.
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