Electric Kif

The experimental funk-rock band Electric Kif recorded its excellent 2021 album, “Dreamlike,” smack dab in the middle of 2020’s pandemic shutdown, which means its four members had all the time in the world to experiment with styles and song structures and instruments and sounds.

You can see that pretty clearly in the album’s credits, where you’ll spot items like guitars, drums and synths, of course, but also fretless bass and piccolo, isolation loops, shells, cooking sheet, and … lighter?

Yes, a lighter. There is no musical instrument called a lighter. We’re talking about the thumb-sized thing you flick to light something on fire.

“That’s a goal of ours: To maybe perk your ear up a little bit,” said Jason Matthews, keyboardist for the Miami-based band. “There are a lot of funk bands doing the same groove that James Brown already did.”

And then there’s Electric Kif, which formed more than a decade ago and has been evolving ever since. Besides Matthews, the band includes guitarist Eric Escanes, drummer Armando Lopez and bassist Rodrigo Zambrano, each of whom their own background and taste to the Kif’s musical table.

“We all like some of the same bands but of course some of us feel stronger than others, so like we’ll have Jimi Hendrix on one side and I come from a Yes world. Armando likes very groove-oriented, hard rock kind of stuff, and we all meet in the middle at Radiohead,” Matthews said. “We all like the Weather Report, Herbie Hancock and Radiohead. That’s exactly our s–t.”

The songs on “Dreamlike” reflect those influences quite clearly, living somewhere near the intersection of jazz and jazz fusion, psychedelic rock and electronic music, with the aforementioned experimental touches swooping in and out of view at times that make sense, even if they’re unexpected. The result is instrumental music that is deeply groovy, vaguely cosmic and relentless — but tastefully — weird.

Before recording the album, for example, the band was heavily into the echo-y style of reggae-adjacent music known as dub. So they went all in on sonic effects such as delay and reverb, giving the songs a persistently wobbly, almost disorienting feel.

At the same time, they were playing impromptu shows on the lawn for the neighbors and watching Black Lives Matters protests unfold on Instagram Live, giving the whole recording process a surreal feeling.

“We just kept experimenting with stuff and we came to some great sounds that way,” Escanes said. “Even when they were noisy, we were like, ‘Well, the world may be ending anyway. Let’s leave that in.’”

If You Go

What: Electric Kif, with the Malik Friedman Group

When: 8 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 22, doors open 7 p.m.

Cost: $15 in advance, $20 at the door

Where: Volcanic Theatre Pub, 70 SW Century Drive, Bend

Contact: volcanictheatre.com.