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Things fade in and out a lot on Jesse Somfay's A Catch in the Voice.

The Canadian producer's latest album is split across two discs, with the first containing ambient compositions and the second being more minimal techno-based. The title of one of the first disc's highlights, "Hypnogogii", stands as a pretty good representative of the territory we're in: the term appears to signify people occupying the "borderland state" between sleep and wakefulness, and by extension the surreal, quasi-hallucinatory imagery generated by the hypnagogic mind, a realm of rushing, humming sound and hyperreal patterns of colour and light (also reported by meditators, prisoners who spend extended periods in the dark, and partakers in hallucinogenic drugs). The music embodies its name: as gorgeous extended synth pads cocoon the edges, sporadic percussion lines weaves in and out of the middle, guiding the track, building to a head and then receding, morphing slowly as they go.

Indeed, much of the imagery here seems concerned with light and space, both inner and outer. A quick browse of the titles reveals the likes of "Good Morning Strange Light", "Folding Ghosts Into Origami Stars", "Borrealis", "Ex Astris, Ad Astra". "Amo Alucinor", from the second disc, translates roughly from Latin as "I love to daydream", the latter word being the root of the English "hallucinate". "Averroes" may well be a tribute to the 12th-century Muslim celestial philosopher of the same name. It's hard to say whether Somfay names these tracks after what the music suggests or conversely uses the titles as templates for the musical ideas, but either way, the two keep pace with one another as a coherent, otherworldly whole.

Some of the shorter tracks benefit from the added focus of constraint. "Folding Ghosts into Origami Stars", for example, layers subtle, buzzing, almost MBV-esque backdrops behind a pretty lead melody and comes off like the kind of atmospheric mini-epic Stars of the Lid do so well. "Brave Late Fade"'s bassy drone is occasionally joined by a choir seemingly heard from a distant dream. Some parts, like the start of "Cuckoo Spit", resemble the murky, primal noises you hear on the kind of medical albums doctors buy to learn the sounds of irregular heartbeats, or the woozy pulsing of an ultrasound scan. And "Irradian Irradiant"'s varispeed arpeggios occasionally even conjure up the unpleasant spectre of Rick Wakeman (not often, though, thankfully).

For my money, the ambient side is the better one, although in practice the two are not often fully separated (see: the beats on the first disc's "Good Morning Strange Light" or "Ex Astris, Ad Astra", the lush drumless flotation tank that is disc 2's "Averroes", or BoC-esque close "NotR"). "Scotia", all looming bassline and fractures of distant melody, and the almost trancey skitter of "Algonquin", are highlights of the second disc.

At nearly two hours total – five of the tracks exceed ten minutes, another three top nine minutes – A Catch in the Voice can perhaps be a little overwhelming to digest in one session. It's not intended as an insult to suggest that your concentration may sometimes also drift in and out of focus: for these field recordings from a land between sleep and wakefulness, there's nothing more appropriate.