time and linking contemporary trends with those
during the first major period of electric car devel-
opment in the 1890’s.
Larminie, James, and John Lowry.Electric Vehicle
Technology Explained. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley &
Sons, 2003. Covering not only cars but also the
full range of electric vehicles, this book describes
and explains in an accessible manner the basic
technology involved. With case studies of specific
vehicles.
Taylor, Barbara E.The Lost Cord: The Stor yteller’s His-
tor y of the Electric Car. Columbus, Ohio: Greydon
Press, 1995. Written at the height of 1990’s elec-
tric car fervor, this book tells the story of Robert
Beaumont, the dynamic individual behind the
1970’s CitiCar and 1990’s Tropica.
Westbrook, Michael H.The Electric Car: Development
and Future of Batter y, Hybrid, and Fuel-Cell Cars.
Piscataway, N.J.: Institution of Electrical Engi-
neers, 2001. In addition to general history, this
study particularly focuses on the period of intense
research following California’s ZEV mandate.
Mark Rich
See also Air pollution; Automobile industry;
Clean Air Act of 1990; Inventions; Science and tech-
nology.
Electronic music
Definition Music produced and heard through
electronic means
Electronic music evolved significantly in the 1990’s, creat-
ing dozens of new music genres and hundreds of new
subgenres, as well as spurring a vibrant underground rave
culture in many American cities. Moreover, electronic mu-
sic influenced mainstream pop, hip-hop, and rock music
and was incorporated into movie sound tracks.
Technological advances in electronic music equip-
ment generated a turn in the American music indus-
try toward increasingly accessible and easy-to-use
synthesizers and computers, which allowed individ-
ual musicians to create music in the domestic con-
fines of their house or apartment. Consequently, a
number of dance music artists, or deejays, emerged
from major urban centers where they found an audi-
ence who embraced their music in all-night dance
clubs. House music, coming out of Chicago, and
techno music, originating in Detroit, spread quickly
into other American cities during the early 1990’s,
combining with other genres like European trance
and British trip-hop to form new subgenres such as
acid techno, anthem house, and epic trance, all of
which contributed to and became associated with
the growing underground rave scene.
Two major electronic music genres, however, re-
mained detached from rave culture. Krautrock com-
bined psychedelic rock with avant-garde electronics
to create a dark, mechanical sound more appealing
to listeners at home than audiences at concerts or
nightclubs. The audience, then, was relatively small
in America, but German Krautrock groups like
Kraftwerk, who describe their own music as “robot
pop,” had far-reaching influence on more popular
musicians of the latter 1990’s such as New York dee-
jay Moby. The other major genre not formally associ-
ated with rave culture, ambient music, is often char-
acterized by what it lacks, frequently leaving out
lyrics, beats, and the typical song structure of a gen-
eral rhythm leading to a lyrical or melodic refrain.
Begun by British musician and producer Brian Eno,
ambient music, like Krautrock, had a limited audi-
ence but widespread influence on other genres, like
trance, and other musicians, finding its most popu-
lar expression, again, in Moby.
Although electronic dance music in the latter
1990’s became associated with rave culture and the
drug use associated with raves, this did not deter
some music artists from going mainstream. The En-
glish electronica group The Prodigy found main-
stream success in America withThe Fat of the Land
(1997), which included best-selling singles “Breathe”
and “Firestarter,” both of which were made into mu-
sic videos that aired on MTV that year. Moby was the
only American electronic artist to gain consistent
mainstream success in the United States. His 1999
platinum album,Play, met with success on the radio
and on MTV, and all eighteen songs on the album
were licensed out for commercials, television shows,
and movies, earning him criticism from techno
purists and praise from mainstream critics. Never-
theless, during the late 1990’s, Moby’s name was
synonymous with electronic music in the United
States.Electronic Music and Mainstream Music As a genre
in itself, electronic music gained a larger audience
in the 1990’s, though, with a few exceptions, it gen-308 Electronic music The Nineties in America