If there¡¯s one thing I¡¯ve taken out of 2013, it¡¯s that the kids are alright. Perhaps as a result of growing up Internet savvy, with easy access to decades of music and countless genres at their fingertips, Japan¡¯s young artists have spent the year pasting together aural collages that gleefully defy categorization.

Back in the summer, it was rap trio The Otogibanashi¡¯s who caught my eye with their album ¡°Toy Box¡± ¡ª a miscellany of beats that veered between J. Dilla-esque beats and folky electronica, and owed as much to Disney as it did conventional hip-hop culture. Meanwhile, Yokohama-based imprint Trekkie Trax ¡ª several of whose members are still in high school ¡ª utilized the freedom of the netlabel format to flood the Web with a deluge of club productions from its extended family, spanning juke, trap and grime. Just one glance at its bountiful output this year and you begin to fear for the members¡¯ graduation hopes.

Someone else whose attendance might suffer in the new year is Hiroshima-born Sapphire Slows, who will have to balance graduate school studies with an increasingly prolific musical career following the release of her debut album in November. ¡°Allegoria¡± ranges from dub-techno on the track ¡°Corekill¡± to Chicago house-inspired dream-pop on album highlight ¡°Fade Out.¡± The glue that holds it all together is the ever-present vocals of singer-songwriter Kinuko Hiramatsu. Recorded at a whisper so as not to disturb her neighbors (one of the perils of operating from a bedroom studio in Tokyo), Hiramatsu¡¯s vocals are soaked in reverb, before being chopped up and looped like they were just another instrument to sample from. At times her distinct brand of melancholia sounds intimate; at others, almost mechanical.

In fact, ¡°Allegoria¡± as a whole is intriguingly schizophrenic: flirting with both club music and indie instrumentation but ultimately turning both down and going off to do its own thing. It makes for what can be a disorienting experience at first, but one that bears repeated listens like no other release I¡¯ve heard all year.

The best Japanese albums of 2013: Kyary Pamyu Pamyu ¡®Nanda Collection¡¯

The best Japanese albums of 2013: Melt-Banana, ¡®Fetch¡¯

The best Japanese albums of 2013: Yosi Horikawa, ¡®Vapor¡¯

The best Japanese albums of 2013: Church of Misery, ¡®Thy Kingdom Scum¡¯