I can see and sympathise with both sides of this debate. I love 'Energy Flash' and it had a huge influence on the way I see electronic music and music in general, but as he says in the intro, his championing of hardcore over experimentalism/self-conscious 'progressivism' was formed as a 'counter-prejudice' to the derision of hardcore then fashionable with the music-crit cognoscenti, and I think this leads him into dismissing or passing over stuff that doesn't fit into his vision of what music should do in the same way prog-house snobs dismissed hardcore because it didn't fit into their idea of what 'musicality' should be. I'm sure he himself sees this and perhaps acknowledges it within the book (I haven't read it for a while, just started again today...).
In a sense I'm almost opposed to deriding music because I've found so much music that I hated at first that I've come to love, and I'm amazed at how a shift in my expectations/taste can change how I hear things... One of the things Reynolds does so well in 'Energy Flash': explaining what there is to like about genres like Gabba which are generally shat on critically. When I read Joe's articles defending/enthusing about tracks/producers that I'm not personally crazy about, I still tend to appreciate his enthusiasm for that music, and I'm sure there are a great many who see it the same way as him. Most forums I go on and people I meet are incredibly enthusiastic about the music that would fall under this thread (I know quite a few people who make and/or DJ it), Dissensus is quite exceptional as a place where people more generally seem to be unenthusiastic or ultra-critical of it. I can't really believe that all that enthusiasm is delusional or misplaced, or the product of media hype.
Nahhh too late, too stoned, can't continue and don't know if any of the above is coherent or relevant to the discussion. But I do think this has been an interesting thread in places, and although its weird to see people getting seriously heated over it that friction between opinions and tension has made it more interesting.
Until I showed up and bored everybody of course.
- but what I'm saying is that you can't extrapolate from that to the generalised statements that you're making. You're getting value judgements and statements of fact mixed up. 
