Whatever way I tried it threw up something I didn't want so after playing around with it I settled on the following.
I have three views now. The first is albums. The top shows Albums, viewed as Album Thumbnails and under options I have set the text to be [Album] 'enter' [Album Artist]. The bottom is view as Details, Group by Album, sort by Default. For some reason when I select Album from the drop down list you get Album by Artist, and again the various artists which Im trying to avoid, though if you go to more (sort groups a-z) and select album from there the 'by Artist' bit disappears leaving just the album name. Any ideas why that would be?
The second view is Artists showing Album Artists, viewed as Album Thumbnails sorted by Default. Options, text set to Album Artist. Show as fanned is checked. The bottom is as above.
The third view is recently added. This Album viewed as Album Thumbnails sorted by date imported. The bottom is viewed as details, grouped by date imported, sorted by date imported.
So the albums view shows me all my albums, the artists shows me all the artists and allows me to get all their albums together in the bottom pane and recently added lets me get quickly to whatever I've added last so I can do artwork or fix tags etc.
I think that's me sorted though no doubt I'll mess around further.