Glad I found this topic, I was planning to start one about experimental, post-punk and alternative music myself!

My musical path changed drastically when I stumbled across the John Peel show in the early 80's, which got me big into acts like Killing Joke, Bauhaus, Joy Division, The Fall, The Cure, Cabaret Voltaire, Sisters Of Mercy and a seemingly endless list of other artists... got very much into almost everything on 4AD at one point, but the music turned a bit too 'soft' for with acts like Lush and The Pale Saints appearing on the label... Dead Can Dance were probably my favourite band on 4AD, with Cocteau Twins, Dif Juz, Modern English, Xmal Deuchland, Wolfgang Press, Clan of Xymox being other favourites... Other artists that really floated my boat, and still do, are Big Black, Death In June, Swans, Current 93, Radiohead, Portishead... too many to list really... my taste drifted towards drone, experimental, noise and general weird shit, with artists like Beequeen, Alio Die, Muslimgauze, Band of Pain, Novy Svet, Ait!, Mushroom's Patience, Andrew Liles, Bardoseneticcube, Chaos as Shelter, Agnivolok, The Hafler Trio, Nurse With Wound, Godspeed you! Black Emperor, Amir Baghiri, Tor Lundwall, Exit in Grey, Contagious Orgasm and too many others to list!

Anyone else here into this stuff??

Burden of Mules is excellent, and I'm old enough to have just got into them when it came out... I lost interest in them when, as you say, they went 'full club'... Before Wolfgang Press they were Rema-Rema, and made a 12" single called Wheel in the Roses, you can hear the similarity to Burden of Mules... There's a lot of excellent stuff in those early 4AD releases!

Was listening to The Fall: Live at the Witch Trials recently... some really great tracks on there... took me back. It seems to be a mix of punk and post-punk depending which track you listen to, not that I have a clear picture of how to differentiate between the two

Funny you should mention that track, because that's the track I'm most familiar with and one that sticks in my head for days after hearing it!! Even thinking of it has made the bassline come back in my mind... Another track that sticks, but not as much as Frightened, is Two Steps Back.

Listening to a lot of Boy Harsher recently...

This is their flagship track; Pain:

Do not watch this if the sight of a naked female breast offends you... unless you want to be offended of course!

Never heard of that, thanks for the tip! 1980/81 were probably the most influential years for me musically, so I'm definitely interested in seeing this!

Anyone know Que Bono from the early 80's? I recorded probably their entire musical output from the John Peel show in '81, and only recently found out who the artist is for this superb group! They only made one 7" single (Making Noise) before they had a massive row and split up... Even the John Peel session wasn't pressed to vinyl, real shame, the singer was awesome IMO... check out one of the very few videos on the net... she has a kind of mesmerising presence... I'm lucky to have captured the 4 tracks from the Peel Show!

Like Loop, but was more into Main, their Hydra-Calm EP was excellent!

Excellent description! Sounds like an unforgettable experience! So Hampson has gone back to forming Loop again, I didn't know that! Will have to check their 'post-Main' stuff out! Main started with a sound that you could say was a really heavy version of Loop in their Hydra and Calm 12", which was merged into the Hydra-Calm EP... their sound then 'evolved' into something very droney... I prefer their less droney stuff. I saw them play during both periods, and at the 'droney period' gig they came on stage and were preparing their instruments in a kind of sound-check which seemed to go on for ages... people in the audience were watching attentively as they were doing this, and slowly it dawned on me that it was the actual gig!

Been listening to way much Theatre of Hate recently... Their songs tend to burn themselves into my head and stay their for weeks! Simply can't get Original Sin out of my head... as soon as I wake up, it's there!