Tentative Andy
I'm in the Meal Deal
I'm not saying that The Genre Formerly Known As Dubstep is like that at the moment, but it's a tendancy that people are quite reasonable to be worried about, particularly when a lot of the talk around it comes out of a distaste for 'stupid wobble' and a reverence for the 'proper musicality' of classic garage. (Also, I think 'intelligent drum and bass' and the whole jazzy fusiony breakbeaty 'thinking of putting a band together to do some of this stuff live' scene from the mid 90s is probably a better analogy than IDM?)
Yeah, as general points I pretty much agree with all of this - but equally it heartens me that there are many people like here like you, me and others who are prepared to fight the resurgence of this ideology every inch of the way (acknowledging right away that this is a ludicrously over-dramatic way to express it!).
However, when it comes to JB in particular, I've got to come out and say that I'm a big fan of quite a large part of his output. Like a lot of people here, I'm really keen on Air & Lack Thereof and the Untold remix, and personally I think the Harmonimix of A Milli works very well. I'll have to track down more of his vocal remixes - think I've heard the Destiny's Child one but can't remember much about it.
I think this centrality of sung vocals and vocal manipulation in his work is both an endearing trait in itself and an important part of what seperates him from more traditional dubstep (not saying this as a diss to trad dubstep, obv, but I do reckon it's important from the pov of those like me who are looking for a 'something new' in his work).
There are some other tunes by him that, whilst well put together, don't really grab me in terms of having many striking ideas in them - I'm not very keen on Sparing The Horses, for example. But as others have pointed out, he's young and still developing, so there's plenty of scope for his potential to become more fully realised.