To say Noise is music unless you're trying to prove things just for the sake of doing it like that fag John Cage is pointless. Noise is an extension of Industrial, which if people looked at its roots, instead of just writing it off as being all NIN and Ministry or Dance electronica like Meat Beat Manifesto or VNV Nation they'd see that it started out kind of like punk, except it was free form art(Look at Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire, Coil, Whitehouse, early Skinny Puppy, Einsturzende Neubauten etc for a clear representation of what Industrial is) that was against the pretentiousness of prog and arena rock, and also was an expression of working class life. With that said Noise cannot be judged on the same set of standards which one judges traditional music as it is Anti Music.
These standards are harder to describe, Anti Music has to be more honest as anyone could mix up some noise... a good example of what I consider to be an incredible Noise act is Melek-Tha, though they're more Black Ambient which I won't go into, because they capture a bleak atmosphere that could be described as tr00 and kvlt effortlessly.
Due to the sheer volume of Merzbow releases(no pun intended) many of the suffer in terms of quality, my picks would have to be the albums he did for Tzadik and Relapse, as well as his collaborations(not just the Boris ones, A Perfect Pain with Genesis P. Orridge as well), plus his first few live releases.
... now wheres VVVVV to elaborate...