Submitted photoKlozd Sirkut's lineup includes Chris Littlefield, second from left, who also plays trumpet in the popular funk/jazz band Karl Denson's Tiny Universe.

Chris Littlefield, the trumpeter in electro-funk quartet Klozd Sirkut, moved to Seattle in 1991.

It was a great time and place to be for musicians of a certain bent, but a challenge for a guy with a hankering for funk.

“That was, like, ground zero for the grunge movement,” he said by phone Monday as he hunted for a place to sit and eat an airport meal. “I was playing funk and pop and all this sort of alternative stuff, even reggae and soca and jazz, but it was a hard go of it, man … there weren’t many funk bands.”

Eventually the grunge dust settled, and Littlefield went on to play in the funk/jazz powerhouse Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe. In 2005, he and other members of the Universe formed BluSirkut during a lull in their main band.

“We started out as more of an electro-worldbeat sort of project,” Littlefield said.

That band would fall by the wayside once Tiny Universe returned to touring, but the seeds had been sown for what would become Klozd Sirkut.

“Eventually, I decided to start (BluSirkut) up again,” Littlefield said. “But it was too hard to because we had members … in San Diego, Canada, Olympia, everything. I wanted to make it local.”

That led to the formation of Klozd Sirkut, which along with Littlefield features Papa Josh Sirheinrich (guitar/bass, loops), Davee-C (drums, loops) and Joey Walbaum (keys).

After successful visits to Bend last summer and again in January, Klozd Sirkut will return to Dojo on Saturday (see “If you go”).

Klozd Sirkut started “kind of as an experiment, (and) just started playing shows down around Seattle. Everybody was having such a blast with it, we decided to stick around and started doing it for real,” Littlefield said.

Klozd Sirkut’s bio reads like a really awesome mission statement: “four well-seasoned funk musicians harness the latest advances in music technology, embarking on a mission to rock the modern club scene with old school musical know-how and pure groove.”

Littlefield elaborated a bit.

“What people can expect is a wide variety of electronic influences. I like to think of us more ‘electro’ than electronica,” he said. “It’s a hybrid band. There are a lot of regular instruments, (like) horns, guitar, drums and keys. However, (we) play with a lot of effects, so the sound is manipulated in a sense that you may not know that I’m playing trumpet, but I am. But it sounds like a synthesizer.”

There’s also a healthy dose of samples and loops, and “computers are definitely integral,” he said.

It’s a lot of gear to haul around to shows.

“Oh my goodness, yeah. It’s a lot of stuff,” Littlefield said, “but it’s worth it for us.”

— Reporter: 541-383-0349, djasper@bendbulletin.com