..for one.

Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld.
Is supposed to be epic, and even if you don't like all the tunes if you reduced it down to a few key tracks it simply wouldn't make any sense.

Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works Volume II. A Triple album on Vinyl...I wouldn't lose a single track, the whole point of this one is they way it lulls you with some "shimmering shards of cerebral majesty" (© NME 1990) one minute, and then veers into creepy and unsettling hoovering noises the next.

is perfect from my POV. Yes, even Boogie With Stu as its creates a great mental picture of the old fella boggie wooging away with another top band.

... but I wouldn't lose a second of Spritualized "Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space" It's a good 80 minutes.

Struggling to think of any others frankly.

Quadrophenia - Townshend reckons its their best work.Not Tommy though cant listen to that these days.
Its too late to stop now by Van Morrison if we are counting live albums too.

Is pretty damn impressive.

Dead Can Dance 'Toward the Within' - it's live but mostly new material so I've unilaterally decided it counts as a proper album.

I don't think I would want to lose any tracks from
Drive-By Truckers - 'Southern Rock Opera'
Jimi Hendrix - 'Electric Ladyland'
Richard Thompson - 'You? Me? Us?'

(Not just Word-compliant RT worship, I LOVE that album...)

Stars of the Lid "...and their Refinement of the Decline"

Two hours of drone-based soundscapes. Quite lovely. I never tire of it.

Time Out of Mind is, let's not forget, also a double album and perfect with it.

Also Electric Ladyland (minus Redding's track obviously).
Chicago Transit Authority comes close, terrific debut.
And several from Miles Davis.

... this double CD is the one:

McCoy Tyner's playing on this set is nothin short of supernatural...

let alone doubles or triples. The suggestions above are good ones, but I think they all sag slightly in places.

albums.

Note to self, read thread properly before posting.

it's gotta be the lamb lies down on broadway every time , pop pickers !

I think this will be Pooh pooed by most of the massive, but I think Sergeant Pepper fits the bill.

Not a single note or breath wasted.

Not sure if live double albums are accepted, but Dire Strait's Alchemy
is pretty perfect for me, no duff tracks.

OK, it's only a double because of the last song, but it's still all killer. In fact, rock's first double album, wasn't it?

for another.

What's interesting is that some albums manage to manufacture a type of listening inside me where I don't care about the weak tracks. Or rather, that they get woven in to be an indispensable part of the journey, even if they are undoubtedly less appealing then some of the material that surrounds them.

A great example is 69 Love Songs by the Magnetic Fields. I hope that most people who have heard it have, like me, revelled in the sheer joy of the variety and changes of tack that it constantly throws up. There are some songs that are some of my favorite ever music, like "The Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side", for instance. And there are some that are definitely not as this standard: "Long Forgotten Fairytale" for example. So, 69 Love Songs has its weak tracks, and if you had to delete some filler, you wouldn't be stuck for choice. But Would I rather it became 50 Love Songs instead on that basis? No, because its creators have managed to make me see that the scope and variety that music can throw at you is a crucial element, and should not be allowed to to be over-powered by a ruthless drive to eliminate any slight distractions or deviations from perfection.

The death of the album format can be traced directly to people wanting to find a record with "no filler". That would be a single, then.

Listening to the new Arcade Fire album - The Suburbs from start to finish will take 64 minutes of your time. Stretched out on my bed after work with the CD playing on my hi-fi, that feels about right. Conversely its predecessor - Black Mirror - clocked in at 47 minutes and always felt too long.

As Jonah pointed out above, a good album isn't simply a load of killer tracks grouped together. It's a more nuanced, contextual creature, with songs carefully selected and positioned in the running order so that what goes before compliments what comes after.

Any record on the scale of The Suburbs is going to take a while to come into focus. Prune the track-listing and it will begin to lose its integrity as an album - the flow that transforms it from a collection of songs into something greater than the sum of its parts.

There are no titles listed on the outer sleeve of The Suburbs and I would struggle to tell you what any of the individual pieces were called. I’ve been enjoying it as a whole.

I'm off to buy it.Great review.

by the Arch-Drude himself Mr Cope...

& does New Order's 'Substance' count?

69 Love Songs is pretty much my favourite of all time for the reasons you've outlined - the variety of the record, the ambition.

I can forgive albums some filler if there is a degree of ambition about them, which I would see as differing from long albums which just include every note recorded by the artist in the previous couple of years.

Doubles on vinyl (I think - they are both an hour or so long) that I would throw into the discussion would be The Boo Radleys' Giant Steps and Prefab Sprout's Jordan: The Comeback

Well there is no consensus over which tracks should be culled so therefore it qualifies (by my logic anyway!).