Hello. Welcome to the brand, shiny, new site that is James' Album Reviews. In the banner I shied away from capitals because, well, you know, it's cooler and all.

Although there are very few reviews to actually look at at the moment, that will all change within the next couple of weeks; I plan on reviewing my entire 852 album collection by the end of the year.

I've often wondered just what the point of a review is; people want to know what the album is like, basically, but don't want to have to buy it/listen to it. So it's always annoyed me that many reviewers have written about an album as though talking to someone who was already heard it. And, hey, maybe some of you look up reviews for fun to see what other people thought of an album, which of course is fine. But for the purposes of providing a suitable rating and recommendation of albums I will use a special format, as outlined in my FAQ.

However, I know that it is very nice to hear intricate details of each song on an album, so I'll also attempt to do that also - at a much slower rate, of course, as (when I write them, anyway) they can often be as long as 1000 words a piece. Which is very time consuming considering the number of albums I plan on reviewing!

Subsequently, each album will have a rating (details of how I