Stuff that doesn't quite work with the vibe of the track. Stuff that doesn't really add anything to the track. Wellying a load of extra percussion over a track that fundamentally wants to be chilled and spacey, holding back when you really want to tear out, dropping in a female vocal snippet that doesn't really add anything to the track, that sort of thing. Or more subtle stuff like using garage rhythms when you don't really feel them for dancing.
Sounds to me like you might possibly be bringing too much of your own tastes to the table - what constitutes unnecessary extra percussion, or non-essential vocal samples - and using them to ascribe motives to the producers that may or may not be correct. But then again, bad stuff in this scene (as with all bad music) does sound basically unnecessary so I can see where you're coming from.
What I took from what you were saying Slothrop was maybe more looking at the crowds/bloggers/hype machine than the producers themselves. I'ma push the boat out and use Sicko Cell as an example of this...I like the tune but I think the way people responded to it was really odd and jarring compared to the reality of the tune itself.
Obviously there's partly the effect of withholding information, the whole mystery thing. But aside from that, if you listen to it, there's no big drop [that's to its credit, making a decent tune without a whopping drop is a skill unto itself]. The 'drop effect' is carefully rationed through the tune; you could argue it's where the bass comes in, but those two 808 stabs don't really add much rhythmic momentum beyond what's already there, or deliver any melodic material like the bass does in a lot of dubstep. It's weighty, but not in a SHEEEEIT kind of way...and on the second drop the bass comes in well before the groove, again rationing the impact. Similarly the melodic line and vocal sample have their own part to play, but are always dropped in 16/32 bars before or after the bass so as not to place too much emphasis on any one structural point. The tune just kind of mooches along, adding and subtracting elements really cleverly.
But what's the general consensus on it...'BIG TUNE'. When it's played at a dance people jump up and down and shout for it at the point when they recognise it but are never quite sure what exact point to lose their shit...they sort of like the fact that it's there but can never quite martial the unified WTF which you usually get with scene anthems.
To me that suggests that all the things around the tune - the anticipation & mystery behind its release but also the 'cutting-edge' scene signifiers that it makes use of, and the ridiculous amount of internet chatter surrounding it - are actually predominantly what people are responding to, rather than its musical content. that then feeds back into the way producers/fans/writers respond to other subsequent tracks.
again, disclaimer, I'm saying this as a fan of the tune and a devotee and close follower of this scene in general.
Sorry for the uber post, but was going for specific musical analysis in response to what Blackdown was saying...