With the latest album I have a quite similar experience as you have. Feels like they’re showing off their technicall skills but forgot to make it aesthetically pleasing to listen to.

They kind of gave that away with the Rick Beato interview. When they wrote this album they primarily focused on notating and only started actually playing the music when it was time to record the album.

Sound quality seems to be related to the binaural microphone they used to record the album. Again: conceptually interesting but not especially nice to listen to.

Still love them though! Second album is often just over the top experimenting with a lot of breakthrough artists.

I have the same feelings for the new Raye album. Sheer fucking hubris 😁