I have never listened to the Replacements. I'm not sure why. Guess i need to do that.

Radiohead-OK Computer

My list of perfect albums: Dark Side of the Moon - Pink Floyd, Colors - Between the Buried and Me, Exoplanet - The Contortionist, Californication - Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place - Explosions in the Sky, A Memory Stream - The American Dollar.

Lateralus - Tool
Dark Side of the Moon - Pink Floyd
Elephant - The White Stripes
Blood Sugar Sex Magick - RHCP
Highway 61 Revisited - Bob Dylan

Cambo said:

Blood Sugar Sex Magick - RHCP

Yes.

Rage Against The Machine - (Self-Titled)
Nirvana - Unplugged

Ok.
Tool - Ænema # 1 for me struck a nerve at the right time.
Bjork - Debut



Rush anything
Primus - Pork Soda
Quicksand - Slip

Junip - Feilds
The Jesus Lizard - Goat
Iron and Wine - Kiss Each Other Clean

No Beattles

Ohhh almost forgot

Mars Volta-> De-Loused in the Comatorium... some people say Frances the Mute is better, and I might agree... But De-loused is what broke through and set the stage. It had no predecessors, nothing to build off of...making it a crowning achievement in my opinion.

Boards of Canada - The Campfire Headphase
J Dilla - Donuts
Madvillain - Madvillainy
Fabriclive 62: Kasra
My Bloody Valentine - Loveless
He Is Legend - 91025, I Am Hollywood, Suck Out The Poison, It Hates You
Zomby - Where Were U In '92
Burial - Untrue
Seba - Return To Forever
Rustie - Glass Swords
Nujabes - Every and all albums he was ever involved with ever

Coheed and Cambria - Second Stage Turbine Blade/In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3

Sickest concept band in history.

Stevie Ray Vaughn - Texas Flood
The Beatles - Rubbersoul
Rolling Stones - Exile on main street
Johnny Cash - Live at Folsom Prison ( I consider this an album )
Paul Simon - Graceland
Sam Cooke - Live at Harlem Square ( This too )
Neck and neck - Chet Atkins and Mark Knopfler
John Frusciante - Shadows collide with people
Willie Nelson - Red headed stranger

Almost: Neil Young - Harvest ( man needs a maid is a tune I just can't dig )
Wu Tang Clan - Wu-Tang Forever

The Rheostatics - Whale Music (1992)

@Kamehameha don't forget the Alexander album. it's just as close to perfect as the others.

i agree with so many of these, so here are some of mine that haven't been listed:

pink floyd - animals
robert palmer - sneaking sally through the alley
man man - life fantastic
super furry animals - phantom power
aesop rock - labor days
louvin brothers - satan is real
ween - mollusk
shel silverstein - great conch train robbery
tom waits - orphans
bob dylan - bringing it all back home
nick drake - pink moon

MGMT- Oracular Spectacular. Gotta be an all-time classic. Every song just has an incredible, unique feel. Same with the second album for me at least, but with a completely different sound than the first.

Passion Pit's Manners is one of my all time favorite albums. I was lucky enough to see these guys live and it was an epic night to remember.

Tool - Lateralus, Aenima, 10,000 days
A Perfect Circle - Mer de noms
Radiohead - In rainbows, hail to the thief, The Bends, Ok computer
Mars Volta - De-Loused in the Comatorium, Frances the Mute
Neil Young - harvest, ragged glory, greendale, mirror ball
Big Wreck - in loving memory.....
The Tragically Hip - fully completely, up to here, days for night, road apples
Matt Mays + El Torpedo - ST, Terminal romance
Nirvana - Nevermind, in utero
Pearl Jam - Vs, Ten
Soundgarden - Superunknown, badmotorfinger
smashing pumpkins - mellon collie and the infinite sadness, zeitgeist,
The Offspring - smash
Alice in chains - everything they did
metallica - kill em all, ride the lighting, master of puppets, and justice for all....
Motorhead - Ace of spades, iron fist, overkill
the beatles - rubber soul, sgt. pepper, abbey road, revolver
Jimi Hendrix - everything he did
black sabbath - ST, sabbath bloddy sabbath, master of reality, paranoid, VOL. 4

i could go on for years.....

Man Man - Rabbit Habits.

Stars of the Lid - And Their Refinement of the Decline

La Mano Cornuda by the Supersuckers. Just when you think it cant get any better you get hit with the last track, the whole album again.
And any Fugazi album. the Furniture ep is pretty good.

honest question to the people that put techno and rap albums in their lists: does musicianship not mean anything to you?

@TheLizardKing

I don't want to get into a super heated debate about this, because I respect your choice in music. The "perfect" albums I listed were simply a deviation from other posts that were simply listing the same albums over and over again.

In 6th grade I traded all my Jack Johnson albums to a kid named will in exchange for ALL his Radiohead CDs. Back when people still had jewel cases. I've listened to OK Computer and Kid A thousands of times.

So given the backstory, to answer your question, yes, musicianship does mean something to me. I'll give a little explanation for my choices. My "techno" and "rap" (if those are the words you choose to define these genres) submissions for perfect album are not created by some revisionist electro douchebag who was too drunk to hold Madonna's left leg at the Superbowl. They are not bullshit ice rap from some wannabe who went to private school in Chicago or H-town (or even worse, New Orleans).

La Roux is an electro-pop duo helmed by Elly Jackson, one of the most under appreciated musicians working today. If you haven't heard her songs, you've definitely heard a song she's written, co-produced, or sang back up on. They are, for sure, most famous for their 2009 hit "Bulletproof", which Kim Kardashian once tweeted the lyrics to. She also did extensive work on Kanye West's "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy" which was nominated for multiple Grammys, including the Song "All of the Lights," on which Jackson is featured, which won Grammys for Best Rap Song and Best Rap/Sung Collaboration. The Gold Edition of La Roux's eponymous album, however, won the Grammy for Best Electronic/Dance album in 2011. To delve into it deeply, you'd need to listen to the album, but it is an inspired, alternative deviation into unrequited love and sexuality. If you have any question about her musicianship, check out her Vevo Lounge Version of "In For the Kill" that appears on the Gold Edition:

http://youtu.be/3RkA2y-JSzY?t=1m35s

I could go into detail about all the others, if you really want me to defend my choices, so ask me about the album and I'll tell you why it's great."Black Star" is an amazing Hip-Hop album that explores the struggle of the MC to stay relevant in a post-Gangsta Rap era. Kanye west is a pinnacle of modern musicianship in my opinion, and while a much better producer than he is an MC, his command of samples and drum beats is nearly unparalleled. I didn't even list all of my Hip-Hop choices that could be considered "perfect." Can you really listen to Ready to Die and not consider that a game changer for the genre?

I dislike the idea that for something to be good it also has to be obscure. Artistic integrity and mainstream success are not mutually exclusive in my opinion. (See: The Beatles, Christopher Nolan, Andy Warhol). Thanks for posing the question though, @TheLizardKing, because I just thought people might like to be exposed to something other than Tool.

Oh, and I like Jim Morrison too.

Dunno if this has been mentioned but Blockhead's Music By Cavelight is definitley up there for me

NonasBigBrownBeaver said:

Yelnots said:

@NonasBigBrownBeaver shadows collide with people is an amazing album!!

Definitely man, I think it's his best

Fuji_M0T0 said:

Dunno if this has been mentioned but Blockhead's Music By Cavelight is definitley up there for me

Blockhead's great dude, I would add in Bonobo's Days To Come & Black Sands and Nujabes's Modal Soul and Metaphorical Music, those albums are fucking amazing!

Huge Nujabes fan and actualy recently discovered black sands and m for monkey,By Bonobo. I've been Playing them non stop ever since!
I'll check out days to come.

If your into Nujabes have you got Into any Fat Jon? He collaborated with Nujabes on the soundtrack for Samurai Champloo

His Humanoid Erotica is a pretty perfect album in my opinion

Kanye west is a pinnacle of modern musicianship in my opinion

to me saying Kanye west is a pinnacle of modern musicianship is like saying Kanye west is a pinnacle of modern musicianship.

lol.

not sure how to write this without offending people so i'm just gonna write what i think and if anyone take it personally then that's their own fault.

here's how i look at it. i like tupac ten million times more than i like dave matthews band. it's not even comparable, i fucking hate DMB. but objectively there is no argument who is more talented. clearly a guy that can sing, write song, play an instrument live while singing with a band etc etc is more talented than any rapper. unless you think rapping is that hard that it overcomes all the things he's lacking.

for me techno is always excluded from any serious music discussion, since they press play then stand there with their arms in the air trying to look like they're doing something. so as far as performance and musicianship they can't even be graded, which is a huge blow for me when considering if something is good or not. obviously more talented people have a massive advantage. so when i'm looking at what I think is "the best" or "perfect" i have to take that into consideration. i just can't understand how other people don't. i can understand liking shitty pop music, but i can't understand when people act like it's anything other than shitty pop music.

as far as rap, same logic applies. if you're just standing there rapping into a mic while a computer is playing all the music for you....well.....it is what it is, isn't it? it's a guy rapping into a mic by him self on stage with a computer doing 50% of the work.......yay......how exciting. that's why someone like K-os is fucking light years ahead of most other rappers. he understands it's vital to have actual instruments for performing music live. the more human element that's involved the more potential it has to be real. the more real (or less fake) the better it is IMO.

put it this way, who's a more talented carpenter? a guy who hand carves a tabel, or a guy who programs a machine to do it for him? i would say it's not fair to compare the guy programming the machine to the guy who took the time to learn and perfect his craft and that i'll take the guy who has a real skill over someone who can program a machine any day of the week.

Dave Grohl says it perfectly:

@TheLizardKing

Word... Okay. I agree with you to some extent. K-OS "The Love Song" is probably my favorite hip hop/R&B record of all time. I can't argue with you about DMB... although I would argue that you can't really compare the two styles and what Pac did is just as important as what Dave is doing.

However, this "techno" thing. "Techno" is Darude by Sandstorm. There's a lot of terms that can describe this type of music. But really, I urge you to check out Alive 2007, or Discovery, both by Daft Punk. The album is composed of hundreds of samples, and while not musically complicated, I do think it connects with the listener on a more intuitive level. Check out Aerodynamic Beats from Alive 2007: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Om38ziFMS7s

Also, you have to take into account electro artists who do their stuff live. Diplo, for instance, mixes live. Skrillex, mixes live. Even if you hate dubby nonsense (which I do), you have to applaud the dude for making the noises in front of you. The mixer is just a post turn of the century piano. Tiesto, Deadmau5, Avicii.. even Guetta. They press spacebar. Diplo however, he is just like a jam band. He feels the crowd, knows what music to play, knows what BPM to play it at, and puts on a kick ass show. Diplo merges genres, mashing up not only songs but neighborhoods, cities, and countries. Is performing, at its very core, not a give and take with the crowd? Diplo excels at this give and take. You leave feeling energized, happy, like you just saw a great show. I'd post one song, but really you should just check out www.soundcloud.com/diplo.

Can an album of "shitty pop music" not also be perfect? What am I supposed to do here, list Broken Social Scene, Animal Collective, Fiona Apple... I was just giving a different opinion. Just because they're a certain type of music doesn't mean they can't also be cohesive and meaningful.

Also, can someone tell me how to embed a clip?