As a member of the iconic South Bay hip-hop group Subcontents, Tape Mastah Steph was an integral part of the emerging underground hip-hop scene in San Jose back in the ’90s. Today, he still is, even though he moved out of California almost a decade ago.

He recently produced The Treatment, the latest solo record from his friend and former Subcontents collaborator Dave Dub. Dub, of course, now heads the Isolated Wax crew, maintaining the most important hip-hop label in the South Bay.

But the connections don’t end there. Dub’s new joint was released in May on Stones Throw Records, run by San Jose expat Peanut Butter Wolf. Steph has released a companion beat mix called Courtesy Flush, also out on Stones Throw.

Wolf was the first person to show Steph how to use an Ensoniq EPS sequencer, back when they were both pause-mixing in the late ’80s and early ’90s. Crazy how things come full circle—for Dub’s record, Steph convinced him to use nothing but the tools they had back in the day: an SP-1200 and…an Ensoniq EPS.

Steph, who now splits his time between Houston and Vegas, will return to San Jose tonight for a DJ show at Johnny V’s spotlighting Stones Throw artists that will also feature Baron Zen and Danny Hackintosh.

“You can expect to hear some original work in the mix with classic grooves and all that jazz,” Steph tells me.

TAPE MASTAH STEPH performs Friday, Aug. 10, at 9pm at Johnny V’s in San Jose; free.

Peanut Butter Wolf works in mysterious ways.

The South Bay music legend pioneered sophisticated production in San Jose’s underground scene in the early ‘90s, before founding the Stones Throw label and signing hip-hop revolutionaries like Madlib, J Rocc and J Dilla. And he’s still engineering musical mini-movements, as Boston band Sonnymoon learned when they first arrived on Wolf’s current turf in SoCal last September.

“He came to our show when we played with Teebs in LA,” says Dane Orr, one half of the Sonnymoon duo. “That night, Wolf was like ‘This guy Jonti’s coming to LA, you guys gotta link up. That was the first time I ever heard of Jonti. Which is kind of funny, since now we’re on tour together, but it’s really cool.”

That tour comes to Pagoda Lounge in San Jose this week, with Jonti and Sonnymoon headlining a show lined top to bottom with forward-thinking, sometimes nearly unclassifiable electro and hip-hop acts like Portland’s Devonwho and San Jose’s own B. Lewis. Knxwledge and Mndsgn are performing at other stops on the tour.

That Wolf’s dropped hint would turn out to be prophetic is surprising since Jonti and Sonnymoon seem so outwardly different. Jonti, an Australian multi-instrumentalist who released his first album, Twirligig, last year, is one of the most fascinating signings on Stones Throw; at the time Wolf described it like this: “I understand the pop references because his music is so catchy, but the arrangements blew me away. I couldn’t figure out how the hell he did what he did. That he did it all on his own at such an early age kinda scared me. I knew right away I needed to add him to the roster.”

Jonti’s music is generally more introspective and despite its intricate, catchy beats, solidly based in a singer-songwriter tradition. His remarkable talent for beatmaking somewhat obscures the fact that in many ways he’s a Nick Drake for the 21st century. Sonnymoon’s ambient brand of electronic music has an epic, cosmic feel that pushes at outward boundaries of sound.

And yet, there are, at a deeper level, a lot of similarities between these artists. Both Sonnymoon and Jonti represent a new kind of experimentation in the ever-more-blurred boundaries between electro and guitar-based rock and folk, between digital and analog. They both reject the retro (mainly ’80s-based) nostalgia that has been the trend in electronic music for several years now—an artistic decision that is not to be taken lightly, as Sonnymoon discovered.

To constellate The Alchemist’s universe, you’ll have to weave a fabric of disparity: Entourage’s Scott Caan, son of venerable actor James Caan. Queens, NY-based thug chroniclers Mobb Deep. Weed rap. Cypress Hill. Beverly Hills. Milli Vanilli. Marshall Mathers. Somehow the idiosyncratic producer, DJ and hesitant rapper still finds time to cull samples for his MPC, devising projects with two of his fellow nostalgists: Gangrene with Stones Throw’s Oh No, and Step Brothers with Evidence of Dilated Peoples. On April 19th, the trio will bring the backpacks out to Santa Clara’s Avalon Nightclub.

They’ve moved on from weed rap—somewhat. Gangrene’s new album “Vodka & Ayahuasca” is 14 tracks of hallucinogenic ramblings and playful menace. All your favorites are here: the scratched callout imploring you to “get real” or “feel this,” the hypnotic piano loop that aims to be in some dadaist landscape, the occasional blaxploitation sample. Conspiracy theories and misguided Timothy Leary references are hip-hop staples, so while the album isn’t groundbreaking, it’s familiar and refreshingly free of the vainglorious aspirations of modern hip-hop. It’s there and it isn’t. Whoa.

In a time when one-time mafioso types like Mobb Deep have to dispel rumors they broke up on Twitter, The Alchemist’s levity and odd focus have kept him relevant. Recent gigs have included filling in as Eminem’s permanent DJ, producing for reigning weed rap ruler Curren$y, and boiling psychedelic tea leaves in the Amazon. For the sake of future weirdness, let’s hope all of this has gone to his head.

The Alchemist, Evidence and Oh No perform at Avalon on April 19th. Tickets are $14.85 in advance. Doors open at 8pm for the all-ages show.