does anybody know of any decent books detailing the history of experimental electronic music (as in tape, concrete etc).
The history of electronic music, if we are talking about the 1950s and 1960s,
is fundamentally an
experimental music history, so any well-researched history should cover aspects of the topics you mentioned (tape, concrete). If you understand Stockhausen's synthesis in
Gesang, then you understand something of the pre- and post-history of the relationship between concrete and purely electronic-based tape music, since Stockhausen both showed through that piece, and articulated in writing, that the opposition was a false dichotomy ... things become much more interesting theoretically once you've worked your way through listening to that period, and once you've absorbed more about how the music was actually made, technically speaking ...
How is your french? There are some good works on concrete I could recommend...Chion is going to be featured in an upcoming issue of the Wire, will be interesting to see what he has to say (has written plenty on the subject already, also on sound in film) ...
Simon Reynolds seems to post many book covers of electronic music on his blog, though he rarely discusses any of them (the last thing I remember was an ill-informed and pedantic comment on Cage). But you will find titles there. The Griffiths' book is good, there are many others, depending on your interests and level of technical expertise. There is an enormous literature on the subject, ranging from the cute histories to very technical treatises in both journal and monograph form (Curtis Roads' book is a standard one on the history of computer music, but will be almost unreadable for many readers).
I've been really getting into the Creel Pone label-.
In the hipster blogger world, Creel Pone has become almost a brand name for 'hey i'm listening to weird historical electronic music', though you rarely ever find anyone actually describing what it is they like so much, much less offering an analysis or history of any of it ... the po-mo hipster network marches on, lol ...
Some of this stuff is just the craziest shit- i'll put up some reccomendations in a bit
Please do, would be curious what people think about individual releases.
There have been threads on Creel Pone before:
http://www.dissensus.com/showthread.php?t=6797
http://www.dissensus.com/showthread.php?t=4922&highlight=creel+pone