What Goes Between the Tracks

Annual membership opens. The reason is duller and better than it sounds.

by Rafi Mercer

The part nobody sees takes the longest. Not the session itself, which runs as long as the record does, but the weeks before it — working out what goes between the tracks.

An interlude is not filler. It is an argument. Put the wrong record between two songs and you flatten both. Put the right one there and something opens that neither would have shown alone. An influence surfaces. A parallel you had never noticed becomes obvious and then unignorable. I have written before about what actually goes into a session, and the honest summary is that the listening is the easy part.

Sessions are planned, prepared, recorded. There is no room of people waiting for me to get it right on the night. What there is instead is a private channel, an archive that keeps every session permanently, and members across a dozen time zones arriving whenever their evening happens to fall. Miss a month and it waits for you. That is not a compromise. It turns out to be the more forgiving shape — a ritual you can be late to.

So: annual membership is now open alongside monthly.

The mechanics are dull. What sits underneath them is less so. A monthly membership asks the same small question twelve times a year. An annual one asks it once and then leaves you alone to listen, which is the correct shape for something that is meant to become a habit rather than a decision.

It does something plainer for me, too. It lets me plan further out than a few weeks. The sessions get better when I can see the year — which record follows which, what to source, what to prepare properly rather than in a hurry. The first one took months to sequence. I would like the next twelve to have that much room.

But I would rather say the real thing than the commercial one. None of this is about a subscription. It is about listening becoming something you do again, deliberately, with attention you chose to give — rather than something happening in the next room while you get on with your day.

One record. All the way through.

That is still the whole of it.

What is the difference between monthly and annual membership?

Nothing in what you receive. Annual is a single payment covering twelve months rather than twelve separate ones. Monthly remains open and remains unchanged.

What happens in a Listening Club session?

One album a month, played on vinyl from start to finish, hosted on a private channel. Between the tracks, other records that open it out — influences, echoes, parallels. Every session is archived permanently, so nothing is missed by being late.

Do I need a good system to take part?

No. Some members listen on something they have spent years assembling. Others listen on headphones on a Tuesday night. The record is the same either way. Full album archive here.

Rafi Mercer writes about the places where music is taken seriously. For more from Tracks & Tales, subscribe.

Every month, The Listening Club gathers around the world. Join here.