With only a few hours left to 2014 I find myself writing up my annual top three lists yet again.

Artists
2014 saw the Canadian artist deadmau5 release what I consider to be his most ambitious album to date and to say I liked it would be an understatement. The release of while(1<2) launched deadmau5 onto my overall top twenty artists and ensured his scrobbles eclipsed everybody else this year. Trailing deadmau5 is The National who have settled in as my go to group when I'm feeling unhappy. The National haven't released any new material since 2013 and normally my…

So the last time I did this was back in 2010 and the first time was in 2008. Since then I've gotten into a lot of new music and I figured I might as well update this. As before I skip years where I don't own any albums from and some years end up being a case of "WTF, why is that his top album for 198_" because I might only have one album released that year. I've really gotten into a lot of older music over the past two years but I'm not going to include any best of…

Once again it's January first and once again here are my top three artists, albums, and songs of the year. 2013 has been a year filled with great music with great new releases by old favourites as well as new discoveries. Interestgly enough, both my top scrobbled artists and albums only had a difference of less than ten scrobbles between them. I guess that shows that there hasn't been one particular release that dominated my listening above else in 2013.

Artists
Nine Inch Nails has been my most scrobbled artist since I started using Last.fm in late 2006 and Ghosts…

I go through periods of hardly buying any music for long periods and sometimes I go through periods where I buy or am given a lot of music in a short time. Generally speaking I don't like getting a lot of new music in a short space of time because I find I don't really get to enjoy them as I get distracted by something newer. That said, I've gotten a bunch of great music so far this year.

January:
tweaker - Call the Time Eternity: I was super psyched for this as the two previous tweaker albums are…

It would seem that I haven't bothered to write a journal entry since my last "best of" which I posted exactly a year ago today. How the time flies.

Artists
Skinny Puppy has been in my top three artists since I joined last.fm in late 2006. Like Nine Inch Nails though, I haven't been listening to their music as much as I used to and when I do it tends to be in spurts; often triggered by hearing a particular song when I have my media player on shuffle. However, I finally got around to picking up their most recent…

2011 has come and gone and it was a good year for music though certainly not as good as 2010 but that comes as no surprise. 2010 was an amazing year for music with a number of great releases buy just as many great artists.

Artists:
Last year I said that I would be investigating the previous work of my second place artist The National and that's exactly what I did. The National has become the soundtrack to my life (or at least the unhappy parts) and as such has blown away everybody else by seven hundred scrobbles. They dominated…

Review originally written for Metacritic:

While it has a number of enjoyable tracks the problem with In Your Honor is the way it's twenty tracks are arranged. Rather then having a blend of hard and soft It groups all the "loud" songs onto the same disc and the "quiet" tracks onto a separate disc. While it's an interesting idea it doesn't work so well in practice and the end result is that both discs lack any kind of flow, both end up sounding mostly the same from beginning to end. Of the two the acoustic disc fares better then the…

Wow, just wow. With so many great acts releasing new work this year 2010 has been a fantastic year for music.

Artists:
Year after year Skinny Puppy has been near the top of my charts. Although normally playing second fiddle to my favorite act (normally Nine Inch Nails) this year saw them actually come out on top. This is especially impressive since they haven't released new material in years. While most of their scrobbles came from Bites a quick scan of my twelve month albums chart shows that I listened to most of their catalog but with each album…

Matthew Good Band - Man Of Action

Between the night and day
lost in the law of averages
what would you know
unless you'd lived a life of it?

They say the kid sold out,
in love with himself run ragged,
always looked to be a man of action
cause that's what the old man
should have been but
this world it wore him out
this world it wears you out

I disappeared today
i went under
if only for a second
and i found where the light drown
if you lay down you can disappear
altogether

I got me…

If you want do one of these as well just get your media player of choice to display your collection by release year and pick your favorites. The last time I did this was in 2008 and it was interesting to see the changes I made due to my changing tastes.

1969: Nick Drake - Five Leaves Left
1970: Nick Drake - Bryter Layter
1971: Black Sabbath - Paranoid
1972: Nick Drake - Pink Moon
1973: Pink Floyd - The Dark Side of the Moon
1975: Kraftwerk - Radio-Aktivitat
1978: Kraftwerk - Die Mensch Maschine
1979: Gary Numan - The…