Are there any albums you consider perfect?


My daughter gave me an ipod for my birthday and I have been loading music to it slowly. As a perxon who listens to albums start to finish I have been loading albums I consider high quality beginning to end.
Makes me wonder how many perfect albums there are out there. Steely Dan's "Pretzel Logic" is to me perfect. What I mean by perfect is not one sound needs to be added or subtracted to make it better. Funny thing is, "Pretzel Logic" is not my favorite Steely Dan album, but its sound is perfect. I can only come up with a few.
Pink Floyd, "Wish You Were Here"
Tears For Fears, "Songs From The Big Chair"

timrhu

The Everest SDBR LP with iconic album art work by Steinwitz of Stravinsky's Symphony in Three Movements coupled with Ebony Concerto played by Woody Herman and his band for whom it was dedicated. The dynamics and performance of the symphony by LSO and Goossens (who premiered The Rite of Spring in England) is still reference and believe me I have heard them all!  Recorded in three track half inch tape in the first class acoustics of Walthamstow Assembly Hall it is a great listening comparison to the Ebony recorded in 35mm three track magnetic film at the Belock Record Studio in Bayside New York. This one LP, loaned from the local public record library around 1969 in the inferior Transatlantic UK pressing, has cost me thousands in record collecting and Hi Fi equipment. Today the album cover is framed and hanging in my music room.... I'm still married and solvent. 

Norah Jones Come Away With Me.  

Beach Boys Surfs Up  

King Crimson Court of the Crimson King

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am not sure I consider any record perfect. But there are certainly many that I consider vanishingly close to perfect.

How am I supposed to know if some incredibly great recording, could have been even better?

Genesis - The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway

King Crimson - Larks’ Tongue in Aspic

Gentle Giant - Glass House, or Octopus

YES - Close to the Edge

PFM - Storia di un Minuto

Magma - Köhntarkösz Anteria

John Coltrane - A Love Supreme

National Health - Of Queues and Cures

Mahavishnu Orchestra - The Lost Trident Sessions, or Birds of Fire

Banco Del Mutuao Soccorso - Io Sono Nato Libero

Deus ex Machina - Equilibrismo Da Insofferenza

Pain of Salvation - Remedy Lane

Return to Forever - Romantic Warrior

Miles - In a Silent Way

There are many other recordings I would put at the same level as these, but then my list would get very long.

 

 

Let me add, that there are very many modern, contemporary, atonal, and avant-garde classical pieces that I consider near perfect, but on recording, they are often paired up with music that I do not.

I consider quite a few pieces by: Elliott Carter, Bruno Maderna, Joan Tower, Charles Wuorinen, Gyorgi Ligeti, Milton Babbitt, Magnus Lindberg, Penderecki, Ernst Krenek, and others, to be perfect.

But it is beyond the choice of the composer to choose any other pieces on the same recording.