A quick welcome

Welcome to the blog space for Hear and There music reviews. In it, I'll be writing reviews of albums that I've listened to, or gigs that I've attended. These albums will cover a wide-ranging gamut of styles of music along the contemporary musical spectrum, ranging from Americana to Doom Metal to Hip hop to Punk Rock and as many things in between as possible. (I like to keep a reasonably open mind as best I can when it comes to this sort of thing, after all.)

Rating systems and styles of reviews

How I'll be tackling the reviews will go as follows: I'll be writing 500 words tops for each album that I review, extolling its virtues or pointing out its flaws (whichever is closest to the mark for the album in question). Alongside that, each album will receive a score out of 100, which will be calculated by rating each track on the album out of 10, adding them together, then dividing that total by the number of tracks on the album. Case in point: if I were to review "Foundations of Burden" by Pallbearer, an album which has six tracks on it, the scores for the tracks would be added up together, then divided by 6.

Scores

The scoring system is a reasonably straightforward one, and will go as follows:

Below 50: Avoid

50-64: Approach with caution

65-74: Mediocre

75-84: Recommended

85-94: Highly recommended

95+: Essential listening

As I'm a reasonably open minded soul when it comes to music, these reviews will be as unbiased as I can possibly make them, although I can't offer any concrete guarantees on that!

One final note, happy reading, and feel free to offer comment and constructive criticism on my writing style, or the albums themselves.

Thanks.

Toby (Hear and There reviews main man)