Music - Tracks & Tales – Tracks & Tales — A Global Guide to Listening Bars & Listening Culture.

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Talking Book — Stevie Wonder (1972)

In 1972, at twenty-two, Stevie Wonder made an album he described as chapters in a book, and pressed a message in Braille into its sleeve. Talking B...

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Sacrebleu — Dimitri From Paris (1996)

In 1996 a DJ born in Istanbul made an album about an imaginary Paris: stylophones, Mancini, Inspector Clouseau and unhurried house. Sacrebleu sold ...

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Open, To Love — Paul Bley (1972)

In September 1972 Paul Bley sat at the same Oslo Steinway that Chick Corea and Keith Jarrett had played the year before, and made a completely diff...

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Two Records, One Idea — Leftism and Heart of the Congos

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...

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An Ever Changing View — Matthew Halsall (2023)

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 Roya...

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Scenery — Ryo Fukui (1976)

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, ...

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Wake Up Everybody — Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes (1975)

Wake Up Everybody (1975) by Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes: Teddy Pendergrass’s final album with the group, a Philadelphia soul classic produce...

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The Boy With The Arab Strap — Belle and Sebastian (1998)

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...

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Mek Do & Mend — Wonky Logic (2026)

Dwayne Kilvington has spent twenty years as the musician other musicians call. Mek Do & Mend gathers fifteen years of his writing, the voices o...

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The White Album — The Beatles (1968)

Thirty songs, four sides, and a band coming apart in separate rooms. The White Album is too long, out of control and impossible to tidy, and that's...

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The 100 records that are worth your time

Most charts count arrivals. This one counts staying. A hundred records from the album reviews, ranked by the total time readers gave each one acros...

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Blue Brazil — Various Artists (1994)

Blue Brazil wears the Blue Note logo but holds none of its sessions. Compiled by London DJ Joe Davis from EMI-Odeon's Brazilian vaults in 1994, it'...

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Nightclubbing — Grace Jones (1981)

Grace Jones's Nightclubbing is remembered as one of the great album covers and heard far less often than it is seen. Take the image away and what's...

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Dance, No One's Watching — Ezra Collective (2024)

Ezra Collective's third album was recorded at Abbey Road in the days after Notting Hill Carnival, with friends and family filling the studio so the...

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Le Pas du Chat Noir — Anouar Brahem (2002)

Recorded eight weeks before the towers and released a year after, Le Pas du Chat Noir is a Tunisian oud player's chamber music for piano and accord...

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Yabun — Meitei (2018)

Meitei's first record, self-released in early 2018 and almost entirely unheard at the time. Five pieces, eighteen minutes, built from field recordi...

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Insides — Jon Hopkins (2009)

Much of Jon Hopkins' third album began as a score for a Wayne McGregor dance piece, and it shows — not in the sound but in the breathing. Every hea...

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The Mountain — Gorillaz (2026)

Recorded across two decades and eight countries, the ninth Gorillaz album is built around grief — and around voices that were already on tape when ...

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Muchacho — Phosphorescent (2013)

Phosphorescent's Muchacho (2013) was written in an off-grid hut in Tulum after Matthew Houck lost his home, his relationship and his studio. Its ce...

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Astral Weeks — Van Morrison (1968)

Three afternoons at Century Sound in 1968, a group of jazz musicians who had never heard the songs, and a twenty-three-year-old in an isolation boo...

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Kid A — Radiohead (2000) - It was left alone...

Radiohead followed the guitar record of the decade by putting the guitars down — a Rhodes piano, an instrument invented in 1928 that almost nobody ...

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Paul's Boutique — Beastie Boys (1989)

The Beastie Boys had every reason to repeat themselves and chose instead to dismantle the version of themselves that worked. Paul's Boutique is wha...

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Back to the World — Curtis Mayfield (1973)

In Vietnam, "the World" meant home. Curtis Mayfield released Back to the World in May 1973, weeks after the last men came back — and wrote not abou...

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The Analog Uluwatu — Hidden Listening Bar, Surf Culture & Vinyl in Bali

You could walk past it. That is the point. On Jalan Labuansait, the road that carries everyone down towards Bingin and the surf, The Analog sits be...

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Café del Mar 25th Anniversary — Various Artists (2005)

At twenty-five, Café del Mar skipped the retrospective. Three discs, nearly four hours, almost all new music from the bar's own independent label —...

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Sunshower — Taeko Ohnuki (1977)

Recorded in three spring weeks in 1977 with Ryuichi Sakamoto arranging and half of Japan's musical future in the room, Taeko Ohnuki's second album ...

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Smokers Delight — Nightmares on Wax (1995)

Made in a twenty-mile triangle of Yorkshire studios and sounding like everywhere warm on earth, Smokers Delight is the record that taught a generat...

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Nils Frahm — Paris (2024)

Frahm's first live album from a single evening — ten pieces recorded at the Philharmonie de Paris in March 2024, with nothing rescued and nothing h...

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Nina Simone at Town Hall — Nina Simone (1959)

Recorded in a Manhattan recital hall in 1959, Nina Simone at Town Hall captures the exact moment a classically trained pianist became one of the gr...

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Caribou — Suddenly (2020)

Caribou's Suddenly is an album that refuses to stay in one place. Moving effortlessly between house, soul, electronica and psychedelia, it captures...

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Coltrane Jazz — John Coltrane (1961)

Coltrane Jazz captures John Coltrane at the exact moment he steps out from the shadow of Kind of Blue and begins the remarkable journey towards bec...

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Here I Come — Barrington Levy (1985)

Some records belong to winter rooms and late nights. Barrington Levy's Here I Come belongs to open windows. Forty years on, its grooves still carry...

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Pink Moon — Nick Drake (1972)

Pink Moon is one of the quietest masterpieces ever recorded. Stripped to voice and guitar, Nick Drake created a record that feels less like an albu...

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Mercy, Mercy, Mercy! Live at "The Club" — The Cannonball Adderley Quintet, Capitol, 1966

In 1966, Cannonball Adderley recorded a live album in a Hollywood studio with an open bar and an invited audience. The club on the sleeve didn't ho...

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Future Sound of London — Lifeforms (1994)

The first time I heard Lifeforms, I remember feeling less like I was listening to music and more like I had stumbled into an environment. There wer...

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Lithic Laura Misch goes underground, and finds the body waiting there.

Laura Misch's second album trades the open sky of her debut for caves, quarries and coastlines — a record built from breath, stone, and the patienc...

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Cocteau Twins — Victorialand (1986) — The Sound of Weightlessness

I first heard Victorialand properly on an ordinary afternoon. No ceremony. No expectation. The sort of day where a record is chosen almost absent-m...

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Thievery Corporation — Saudade (2014)

Saudade does not ask for your attention. It waits for it. Thievery Corporation's most cohesive and quietly ambitious album trades trip-hop for boss...

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The Dave Brubeck Quartet — Time Out — The Sound of Counting Without Counting (1959)

People know the track. Listeners know the album. Take Five may be one of the most recognisable pieces of jazz ever recorded, but the real adventure...

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Miles Davis — Ascenseur pour l'échafaud (1958) — The Sound of a City Thinking

There are albums that announce themselves immediately. Albums that stride into the room, shake your hand, and make certain you know they have arriv...

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Dimitri From Paris Presents Le Chic Remix (2005) — The Perfect Soundtrack for the Journey Home

Some albums arrive at exactly the right moment. Somewhere between Copenhagen, Amsterdam and the long journey home, Dimitri From Paris Presents Le C...

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Thievery Corporation — Sounds from the Thievery Hi-Fi (1996)

Thievery Corporation's 1996 debut arrived at a moment when electronic music was multiplying into tribes. They ignored all of it. Sounds from the Th...

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Secrets — Herbie Hancock (1976)

By 1976, Herbie Hancock had little left to prove. Head Hunters had become one of the most successful jazz albums ever made. Thrust and Man-Child ha...

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Protection — Massive Attack (1994)

There are albums that announce themselves immediately, and there are albums that slowly become part of your life. Protection has lives with me...

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Chick Corea — Return to Forever (1972) — The Sound of Music Learning to Float

There are albums that announce themselves immediately. Big openings. Big statements. Records that want you to understand their importance within th...

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Doo-Bop — Miles Davis (1992)

Released in 1992, after the death of Miles Davis, Doo-Bop remains one of the most divisive records in his catalogue. Some dismissed it immediately....

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Leftfield — Leftism (1995) — The Sound of Losing the Map

There was a period of life where you rarely knew exactly where you were heading, but you felt more alive because of it. Leftism still sounds like t...

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Summers Sons — Dare To Wonder (2025) — South London in the Sun

Dare To Wonder sounds like South London after the city finally relaxes. Warm jazz rap, evening light, open windows, and music made by people who st...

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Nightmares on Wax — In A Space Outta Sound (2006)

Some albums ask for your attention immediately. Others slowly improve the atmosphere around your life until one day you realise you've been living ...

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John Prine — The Tree of Forgiveness (2018)

By 2018, John Prine had already lived several lifetimes inside one voice. The Tree of Forgiveness arrived after illness, age, and decades of quiet ...

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The Tracks & Tales Guide Listening Albums

Talking Book — Stevie Wonder (1972)

Sacrebleu — Dimitri From Paris (1996)

Open, To Love — Paul Bley (1972)

Two Records, One Idea — Leftism and Heart of the Congos

An Ever Changing View — Matthew Halsall (2023)

Scenery — Ryo Fukui (1976)

Wake Up Everybody — Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes (1975)

The Boy With The Arab Strap — Belle and Sebastian (1998)

Mek Do & Mend — Wonky Logic (2026)

The White Album — The Beatles (1968)

The 100 records that are worth your time

Blue Brazil — Various Artists (1994)

Nightclubbing — Grace Jones (1981)

Dance, No One's Watching — Ezra Collective (2024)

Le Pas du Chat Noir — Anouar Brahem (2002)

Yabun — Meitei (2018)

Insides — Jon Hopkins (2009)

The Mountain — Gorillaz (2026)

Muchacho — Phosphorescent (2013)

Astral Weeks — Van Morrison (1968)

Kid A — Radiohead (2000) - It was left alone...

Paul's Boutique — Beastie Boys (1989)

Back to the World — Curtis Mayfield (1973)

The Analog Uluwatu — Hidden Listening Bar, Surf Culture & Vinyl in Bali

Café del Mar 25th Anniversary — Various Artists (2005)

Sunshower — Taeko Ohnuki (1977)

Smokers Delight — Nightmares on Wax (1995)

Nils Frahm — Paris (2024)

Nina Simone at Town Hall — Nina Simone (1959)

Caribou — Suddenly (2020)

Coltrane Jazz — John Coltrane (1961)

Here I Come — Barrington Levy (1985)

Pink Moon — Nick Drake (1972)

Mercy, Mercy, Mercy! Live at "The Club" — The Cannonball Adderley Quintet, Capitol, 1966

Future Sound of London — Lifeforms (1994)

Lithic Laura Misch goes underground, and finds the body waiting there.

Cocteau Twins — Victorialand (1986) — The Sound of Weightlessness

Thievery Corporation — Saudade (2014)

The Dave Brubeck Quartet — Time Out — The Sound of Counting Without Counting (1959)

Miles Davis — Ascenseur pour l'échafaud (1958) — The Sound of a City Thinking

Dimitri From Paris Presents Le Chic Remix (2005) — The Perfect Soundtrack for the Journey Home

Thievery Corporation — Sounds from the Thievery Hi-Fi (1996)

Secrets — Herbie Hancock (1976)

Protection — Massive Attack (1994)

Chick Corea — Return to Forever (1972) — The Sound of Music Learning to Float

Doo-Bop — Miles Davis (1992)

Leftfield — Leftism (1995) — The Sound of Losing the Map

Summers Sons — Dare To Wonder (2025) — South London in the Sun

Nightmares on Wax — In A Space Outta Sound (2006)

John Prine — The Tree of Forgiveness (2018)

The Tracks & Tales Guide Weekly Letters.