Acclaim for Fadi Tabbal’s I recognize you from my sketches, released by Ruptured in January 2025:
“Subsuming the sounds of others into his own, not in his typical bilateral mode of collaboration but through sampling, Tabbal seems to grapple with the binary between community and self. โI am all that is left,โ he announces in the closing track. As the tidal synth pads wash over and retreat into tape hiss, the trace of the medium is the last to go. But this solitude is not an abandonment; empty tape always carries the potential to hold space for sounds yet unheard.” โ James Gui, Pitchfork 7.5
https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/fadi-tabbal-i-recognize-you-from-my-sketches/
“10 tracks of somber ambient and rose-tinted noiseโat times plaintive, at times anguished. I hear bits of Tim Hecker in the smoldering distortion crackling at the edges of his synths and guitars, and a Kranky-esque sensibility in generalโin the mournful desert landscaping of โ(keep pumping),โ say, or the striated textures of โWhen we swam together,โ translucent as quartz. Citing a lifetime of personal strugglesโmental-health issues, loneliness, missed opportunities, the violence of Beirut itselfโTabbal calls the record โa breakup album between who we want to be and who we turned out to be.โ That sounds like a bleak assessment, but by the end, his tough-love meditation yields something that sounds a lot like hope.” โ Philip Sherburne, Futurism Restated
https://futurismrestated.substack.com/p/futurism-restated
“A lot seems to happen here in semi-secret detail, which is not congruent with the more obvious, superficial events and at the same time interacts with them in an interesting way. At points like this one has to mention Tabbal’s musician friends – Julia Sabra, Charbel Haber, Anthony Sahyoun, et al: people who have repeatedly played an important role in the artist’s life and work and whose samples and quotations beneath the surface also shape the sound of this album, which fits well with the personal theme, because every biography, every personal memory would not be what it is without the influence of others. The semi-transparency of the sounds creates a tension that is never fully resolved and also leaves open the question of whether absence really is the only thing that protects life.” โ Uwe Schneider, African Paper
http://africanpaper.com/2025/02/08/
“Tabbal continues his long-standing conversation between self and community, exploring the ways in which personal and collective identities intersect through music.” โ Cairo Scene
https://cairoscene.com/Noise/
“This latest release, with the lovely title, I recognize you from my sketches, sees Tabbal develop his core sound with even more emotional depth and explores the spaces between memory, identity and personal growth.” โ Norman Records UK
https://www.normanrecords.com/records/
Adventures in Sound & Music x Resonance FM broadcast by Shane Woolman for The Wire Magazine (with a guest mix by Fadi Tabbal):
https://www.thewire.co.uk/audio/fadi-tabbal-guest-mix
Pacific Notions x KEXP broadcast by Alex Ruder:
https://www.kexp.org/shows/pacific-notions/
Featured in Battiti’s broadcast “How We Roll” for RAI3:
https://www.raiplaysound.it/audio/2025/02/
Featured in Battiti’s broadcast “Rime Ignoranti” for RAI3:
https://www.raiplaysound.it/audio/2025/02/
Ruptured Music 