I'd generally prefer to listen to someone who experiments using a form or applying a strong intent that makes it feel like more than complexity for the sake of it. Like you say, experimentation with the boundaries of performance and ability is great. Mr Bungle aren't the be all and end all of technical music, but their ability to seemingly do the impossible and make their broken music puzzles make sense show a level of compositional talent. The flipside is when music feels thrown-together - crazy hard to play parts of a song that nonetheless doesn't feel like a whole. Like, there's no doubt that the Mahavishnu Orchestra's members were/are incredibly proficient, but they manage to show this through interspersing their blistering ability between each other and transitioning between sections to make their strongest solos and moments really pop, not all noodling off forever. Being more or less complex, the shapes are probably gonna change - but it still needs a form that works (I'm not talking verse/chorus, I literally mean any kind of intended form by the artist).
Obviously it depends on how much musical 'busyness' (complexity is harder to define, and also you can take and how much, but generally music that I enjoy and am not just impressed by has a good sense as a whole - a coherent shape to the music. I think the structuring and compositional skills play more of a role in terms of perceived taste of whether you get something being pretentious or not, because even in songs with 'basic' arrangements and accessible structures there can be a lot of technicality, if not necessarily all the time (lets say 80s pop metal or smooth jazz).
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