in the past 5 years these are probably the things i have listened to the most:

sonic youth, fushitsusha/haino, melt banana, harry pussy, dead c, mf doom, bardo pond, the jesus lizard, leviathan, solex, tara jane o'neil, sun ra, john coltrane, double leopards +related projects, apani b fly emcee, dj spinna related things, james brown, guided by voices, the shadow ring, dj shadow things, yellow magic orchestra, trojan records compilations, compilations of funk, compilations of afrobeat, quasimoto, boris, shellac, darkthrone, striborg, percee p

5 (well, 6) bands that have been releasing good stuff over the past 5 years:

Sonic Youth
Deerhoof
OOIOO
Brad Mehldau Trio
Radiohead

2002 - Sonic Youth, Shellac, Flying Saucer Attack, Mogwai, GNU, Fennesz, Pita, Desormais, etc
2003 - Sonic Youth, Ida, Cat Power, Low, Mogwai, GY!BE
2004 - Sonic Youth Philip Jeck, Merzbow, Taylor Deupree, Oren Ambarchi
2005 - Sonic Youth
2006 - Sonic Youth, Broken Social Scene, Battles, OOIOO, Birchville Cat Motel, My Cat is An Alien (been reading The Wire a little bit more)

Hey man you better watch it. She's got 34+ tunings and she knows how to use 'em!

2001- Radiohead, Mogwai, Idlewild
2002- The Fall, Buzzcocks, Ikara Colt
2003- Million Dead, Sonic Youth, These Arms Are Snakes
2004- Youthmovies, Sufjan Stevens, CocoRosie
2005- Boards of Canada, Animal Collective, Sleeping People, Jesu
2006- Battles, Grizzly Bear, Six Organs of Admittance

By 'use them' do you mean 'whine in a particularly uninspiring fashion whilst being a little bit white funk and appealing only to bulldog dykes who are so ugly on they can truly understand the ugliness of that horrific music'? If so then I agree.

Glice's rules of the internet, #472 - Ani DiFranco fans are humourless, sexless walking corpses. Be careful when you wind them up, because they tend to whine more than your average emo kid.

sy
nick cave and the bad seeds
einsturzende neubauten
tool
kurt weill

lok mate, just cuz i dont have the entire backstret boys backcatalog with the japan only justin timberlake bootlegs that doesnt mean im not with it! completist bastard!!!!!

2002: NoFX, Weezer, Nirvana
2003: Sonic Youth, Pixies, Meat Puppets
2004: Sonic Youth, Blonde Redhead, Yo La Tengo
2005: Deerhoof, Animal Collective, Ween
2006: Deerhoof, Animal Collective, Devendra Banhart

2002 - Ikara colt. Terminally underrated, fast angry and clever.

2003 - and you will know us by the trail of dead. Only the first album sounds like sonic Youth. When i actually bought Daydream Nation i was very dissappointed because it didnt remind me of trail of dead (at least not Source tags and codes) at all.

2004 - Sonic Youth. The genesis of an Obsession in the crappest year of music ever.

2005 - The Shins, The Fall. The Shins helped when i quit. And i didnt hear them from Garden State. The Fall helped me when i felt i couldnt identify with any "young" bands that all had stupid hair and sounded like bad versions of bad versions of Oasis. They also filled the gap that the bleak months of February/March ish created (Mclusky and Ikara Colt splitting up in quick succession. I was sad).

2006 - Onedia, Les savy fav. Les savy fav rock as you all agree. And Oneida are a recent discovery who sound better everytime i listen to them.