Release data:

Andre Alvarez – Picture Music
CD, Private Release, 1996

What I got here is another very nice recording full of classic ’70’s cosmic music that synthesist Andre Alvarez created as follow-up to his cassette “Luna”. In eight “Pictures”, Mr Alvarez has succeeded blending the sound of vintage Schulze and TD along evocative atmospheres of Jarre (“Pictures 3”) when he started out his career in France.

Strictly applying only analogue equipment and no means of MIDI/computers whatsoever, his highly atmospheric and at times vocoder-spiced compositions are rather breathtaking along pieces as “Pictures 5” and “Pictures 8” (a live track which has a nice touch of TD’s “Ricochet”) that take the rhythmic alley.

The 11-minute “Pictures 7”, also the longest piece on the album, is the highlight for me, sketching out lovely and captivating analogue landscape, with melancholic whale sounds flying by occasionally and some vocoder voice in the second half.
All in all, “Picture Music” makes a very fine and recommended example of old school spacy electronics.