Merzbow, the German-derived stage name of Japanese-born “noise musician” Masami Akita, has released over 300 recordings since 1980. After his concert Monday night at the ’Sco, one has to wonder how he keeps coming up with ideas. Merzbow’s trippy 45-minute set was a stark departure from the venue’s typical fare, eschewing such profligacies as pitch and rhythm, resulting in a show that was highly unusual but ultimately frustrating.

After a strident opener by the supremely weird experimental band Guerrilla Toss featuring a yelping female vocalist and a guitarist inexplicably showing a lot of skin, Merzbow grimly kicked off the composition of his sonic landscape. His art — as the word “music” hardly seems appropriate — is the construction of tuneless, dada-inspired droning that grows and evolves depending on which equipment the artist chooses to manipulate. At Monday’s set, the preference was

largely for creating earsplitting walls of what sounded roughly like constantly departing aircrafts and the white-noise blur of television static — not, typically, the feel-good jams seemingly called for by a Monday night.

But Merzbow, apparently, has a method to his madness — 300-some albums worth of method, no less. The crowd at the ’Sco was a decent size and met the unorthodox performance with genuine, if bemused, appreciation. For his part, Merzbow barely acknowledged their presence. His extreme reticence — he never spoke or cracked a smile for the entirety of the time he was onstage — neces- sarily forced all attention onto his creation, the sprawling, maddening wasteland of sound over which he made himself master.

The problem of focusing all attention onto the noise, however, is that the audience is forced to listen to it without the distrac- tion provided by any possible onstage antics. As a consequence, they are in danger of realizing that what they’re hearing is not in fact very good. Merzbow’s art is certainly complex, probably much more so than the listener realizes, but complexity and high-flown influences — which, according to the artist, encompass everything from free-form jazz to fetish sex — do not a compelling show make.

Moreover, just because what the artist creates is unusual does not mean that the art is somehow better than what it succeeds. Novelty for its own sake, without real aesthetic appeal, is destined to fall flat.

Without a doubt, the artist would disagree that his noise is indeed novelty for its own sake; it’s probable that each modulation of sound Merzbow facilitates is care- fully chosen for how it will play into what’s already being produced. But a layman with no experience in the genre would doubtless hear nothing but senseless droning. If there are CliffsNotes, they are locked inside the artist’s brain — and he’s not telling.

Monday’s Merzbow show was a mystifying experience, as each piece drifted undifferentiated into the next, and certain members of the all-ages crowd nodded their heads solemnly in a pantomime of “getting it.” But did anyone really get it? For all the pretension, I would bet that the only person in the room who really knew exactly what was going on and what it meant was the artist himself. Unfortunately for the rest of us, relentless noise sounds the same whether or not there’s some deep existential meaning behind it — even if it’s really good relentless noise. As such, the members of the confounded crowd are left to stand and gape and, occasionally, cover their ears.

When Merzbow was satisfied with his set, he abruptly switched off the equipment mid-drone and walked off the stage without another word. The lights turned up, and the dazed audience members blinked at each other before shrugging and filing out. Some people smiled knowingly at each other, perhaps feeling that they had cracked the aural code, but the majority looked simply perplexed; perhaps that, after all, is what Merzbow was going for.