A Record Store, something we've always wanted to do
By Rafi Mercer
There’s a certain itch that never quite leaves you when you’ve worked with records. The smell of the cardboard, the slide of vinyl against paper, the weight in your hand as you flip it over. Even after years away from the megastores, I still find myself missing that feeling — the sense of being surrounded by shelves that held entire worlds.
Lately I’ve been wondering whether Tracks & Tales should have its own record store. Not another endless catalogue competing with the giants, but a focused, deliberate collection — the kind of place where every record on the shelf has already been listened to, lived with, and chosen for its ability to change the atmosphere of a room.
The obvious starting point is already there: our Top 50 Listening Bar Classics. Those albums — ambient driftworks, jazz landmarks, deep listening essentials — aren’t just lists on a page. They’re the backbone of the listening bar experience. Imagine if you could click through, not just to read about them, but to buy the pressing, to hold it in your hands, to lower a needle and feel the same resonance that fills a bar in Tokyo or Berlin.
Of course, there’s more to it than simply listing records for sale. A store has to have character. I think about the listening bars themselves: shelves lined with vinyl, but never cluttered. Every spine is a choice, every sleeve worn from use. That’s the ethos the store should carry online: fewer titles, chosen well, presented with context. Not just “buy now,” but liner notes, history, a sense of why this record matters in the architecture of listening.
I can see it taking shape in layers. The Top 50 as the foundation, then curated expansions — Japanese pressings that reflect the origins of the listening bar, contemporary ambient works that show where the culture is heading, maybe even a small run of exclusives pressed with care. The point wouldn’t be breadth. It would be depth. Every addition would be another tile in the atlas.
It’s not lost on me that running a store is a serious undertaking. Stock, shipping, suppliers, margins — I know the machinery behind it all. But perhaps that’s why the idea appeals: because it could be done differently. Limited runs, seasonal drops, bundles that connect drink and sound, playlists that come with the purchase. Buying a record wouldn’t be just about acquisition; it would be about entering a ritual.
And then there’s the possibility of pairing it with what we already do. Imagine reading about Midori Takada’s Through the Looking Glass on the site, then clicking straight through to order the vinyl, sleeve notes included. Or exploring our dossier on Tokyo and finding a curated box of kissa-era jazz available to bring home. The store wouldn’t sit apart; it would flow directly out of the editorial, another branch of the same philosophy.
I keep coming back to this: the best record stores I’ve ever known weren’t defined by size, but by trust. You went because you knew the person behind the counter had already done the listening for you. You knew their taste aligned with yours, or would challenge it in just the right way. That’s what I’d want Tracks & Tales to offer. Not a warehouse, but a companion.
Maybe it’s just a thought in the margins, like the streetwear idea, but it feels connected. The listening bar was born from devotion to sound, to vinyl, to the belief that listening deserves its own architecture. A record store is part of that same lineage. If Tracks & Tales is an atlas, then the store is the compass — something you can hold, point, and follow into the sound.
Rafi Mercer writes about the spaces where music matters. For more stories from Tracks & Tales, subscribe here, or click here to read more.
