Decade of last.fm scrobbling countdown:
49. Matt Uelmen (623 plays)
Top track (597 plays): Tristram, from Diablo (1996)
(This sample is the extended–and improved–version appearing in Diablo II.)

The Diablo series managed to evade me in its first two installments, and not for lack of effort on my part. A combination of a panophobic mother in the first instance and an outdated PC in the second restrained my computer gaming experience to Starcraft and Age of Empires. But that didn’t stop me from acquiring the soundtrack. I might have downloaded Tristram in mp3 format as early as 1997, when MIDI replicas were still a viable alternative. (The first mp3 I ever downloaded was Harvey Danger’s Flagpole Sitta. I actually remember this!) At any rate, it is my indisputable favorite song ever. Sorry …And Then There Was Silence. You’ll have to settle for indisputable second. I probably listened to Tristram thousands of times as a teenager before last.fm existed, and even in the past ten years it has drastically exceeded all other songs on my charts. (Compared to 597, my third most listened song is at a measly 255.)

I am not a huge Matt Uelmen fan overall. The numbers attest to that. But this song reaches a level of ambient perfection that has never been achieved before or since. I don’t have much to say about it, save that if you don’t like it I question your humanity. This is the only artist that has climbed his way into my top 50 based on a small selection of songs, let alone based on one single track.