n electronic music circles, the Raster-Noton label is known for two things: top-quality minimalist music and horrible packaging ideas. For years, every Raster-Noton release has been highly anticipated and, often, genre-defining, as was the case with Mokira's first release, Cliphop. Likewise, for years, each release has come in a metallic Zip-lock bag that is about twice as large as a regular CD jewel case. Ugly and annoying!

Well, Raster-Noton has recently begun a new series of releases, subtitled "Static," and one of the first releases is Temporary Music by the Canadian artist Mitchell Akiyama. For this work, Raster-Noton has replaced the metallic bag with a cardboard CD case with a little elastic band to hold it in place. I must say, I liked the new packaging when I first got my hands on it. However, I was not impressed with the music that the package contained.

I'd heard Akiyama's earlier album, Hope that Lines Don't Cross, and was generally disappointed. The work had its moments, but it was simply a little too reminiscent of other, better work in the "glitch" school of electronic music. However, that work came out on Subtractif, a label I've never been overtly fond of, and Temporary Music was coming out on Raster, one of the best labels around, so I was willing to give Akiyama another chance.

Was that second chance warranted? Not really. Again, there are some interesting moments here and there. The bass line on the first track, "Big Sur," is fantastic—one of the best bass lines I've heard on a work of electronic music in a long time. Likewise, the stuttering static on "Arteial" is engaging, and "Intravene" has a nice beat. But these high points seem incidental; the work as a whole is tiring and derivative. Akiyama's work here pales in comparison to other, similar works, like Electric Birds' Gradiations and Sogar's Stengel. Those works, like Akiyama's, are made up entirely of sound fragments. However Electric Birds and Sogar manage turn these diverse fragments into fully-realized musical narratives. The artists lead us along on journeys, and the journeys are always rewarding. With Temporary Music, I really only hear the vague echoes of any journey. The songs share sounds—lots of clicks, of course, and other tiny granulations of noise—but they do not share any sort of ebb and flow, any sense that each part is connected to the every other part, or that any of these songs belong together in this work.