I have tried and tried to listen to 'Pulse Demon'but I cannot make it past the first couple of tracks. I hate it when music 'beats' me and becomes unlistenable but I have to draw the line somewhere.

^it takes alot to admit it I know... with Merzbow I can understand the appeal and periodically I will have a hankerin' for some deeply textured noise, but it just gets too much after a while.

However I do love the idea though of noise filling in the spaces; and should you choose to you can listen, picking out the nuances like you would in the silence of a quiet summer's afternoon - passing cars, distant birdsong. Except in this case the distant bird song is nails on an aluminium sheet drowning in a sea of white static. It's all relative.

merzbow/boris collab "sun baked snow cave" is amazing. anyone else like it?

I actually like Merzbow. And I don't even know why...
Their(his) discography is confusing though. I have some 80s/90s stuff, which are more or less noise(and my favorite), but some of the recent releases aren't that bad on the ears.
Check out '24 Hours - A Day of Seals' and 'Offering'. Both are very listenable actually.

I like Merzbow, but more as background music, or funny entertainment. It's not really my thing, but I respect the guy a lot for all the work he's put out.

Although, I am really into most of the stuff he's done with Boris. I recommend any of their collaboration tracks to anyone into both Noise, and good old-fashioned rock.

I'm thrilled that Skaligojurah introduced me to this man's music. He is already one of my favorite noise/noise rock musicians.

I haven't really heard enough to fully judge him, and I suppose some 90s music can be too technical and cold (for me certainly), but I'm not sure lower technical rigour necessarily would have to be the reason people would call it throwaway. Could be other reasons. I remember when I heard some of his music it sounded a little simple. And for some reason Japanese music is seen as particularly hip by some, but more when it uses styles already very familiar in the West.

Japanism adds a special sprinkle of sparkle. The cute accents of of the girl bands that sing in English is beauty that has been refined since Sei Shonagon. And the extremes that Merzbow insists upon take us to mountaintop Zen meditation epiphanies. That stuff deserves to be thought of as hip.

Japanese pop to me has definitely been the main part of their music, rock music often sounds more derivative of the West though. I do like some Japanese experimental music like World's End Girlfriend but some others like The Boredoms bore me lol.

Eh, I find a brilliance in it's painfulness. It's somehow relaxing to me, a psychotheraphy for my inner frustrations.