You’re not likely to hear many bands whose music sounds quite Eastern Blok’s. The Chicago-based group, which comes to the Blind Pig on Saturday, cooks up a unique, rich, heady brew of Balkan folk, jazz, classical, Middle Eastern and klezmer styles.

Given that particular musical mix, it shouldn’t surprise that the bandleader and main composer is an Eastern European native — Goran Ivanovic, who also plays guitar, is from Croatia. And, a few times, they’ve toured with singer Grazyna Auguscik, a Polish native. (For this tour, however, Auguscik is not on board.)

And these guys are definitely an ambitious unit, always pursuing new ways of re-combining their far-flung influences. For example, on their last album, 2008’s “Folk Tales,” some tracks segue from an exotic Middle Eastern passage into a jumping klezmer rhythms. Or, or a pastoral folk music section will give way to a burst of fusion-esque guitar fireworks, a la John McLaughlin.

Helping Ivanovic craft this distinctive, pan-cultural fusion in Eastern Blok are Doug Rosenberg on woodwinds, Matt Ulery on upright bass and Michael Caskey — a Michigan native and onetime Detroit resident — on drums and percussion.

Their music often bristles with a restless forward momentum, accented by quirky phrasings and unusual rhythmic patterns, as the bass and drums push and pull the groove in different directions. And, throughout, the group eagerly embraces the improvisational aesthetic of all great jazz. Listen to Eastern Blok "Balkan Healer" (MP3).

“We just love the challenge of taking various elements of these styles and mixing them together in a way that is satisfying to us,” says Caskey, who is from Paw Paw, near Kalamazoo, and got his music degree from Western Michigan University. He then lived in Detroit from 1999 to 2001, playing in various area bands, including the Brothers Groove and Blackman & Arnold.

“It’s not that everyone in the band likes all Balkan music, or all jazz, or all classical music,” says Caskey in a recent phone interview from the group’s tour van as it rolled down an Indiana highway. “But we like picking out aspects of those styles that we enjoy, and combining them in a way that is hopefully unique, and in a way that makes it ‘our’ sound.”

When Caskey first joined Eastern Blok, about five years ago, he was already adept at of jazz, R&B and Afro-Cuban styles, but didn’t have much experience with Balkan folk or klezmer music.

“But when I joined this band, I brought what I did to what the band was trying to do, just like the other guys did. And, as a function of playing so many gigs — and as a function of our collective improvisational vocabulary — everyone, including me, modified our approach to create, and then adapt to, this new sound that we pursuing.

“For example, in my case, I incorporated more percussion and less traditional drums, and the other guys began using their instruments differently, to approximate some of the sounds of the Balkan-folk music.”

The band has been composing pieces for a new record, and the Blok plans to start recording in the fall or winter, says Caskey.

“Yeah, Goran and Matt have been writing some stuff, and we’re just putting a repertoire together we all think is worthy of putting it on a record, and getting out there and improvising off of it.

“The new stuff is akin to what you heard on ‘Folk Tales,’” says Caskey. “We’re still working with a lot of Balkan harmonies, and the rhythms are still very much in the Eastern European folk tradition, but using Western-style arrangements.

“But I would say that the new stuff is more thematic, and more developed.”

In the past, when Eastern Blok played Ann Arbor, it was usually within the more genteel confines of the Firefly Club. But Caskey used to play the Pig when he was in the Brothers Groove, so he knows that venue has a different vibe, and often, a different audience.

“And I feel like we’re really versatile,” he notes. “We can play a living room concert, and play intimately, and sensitively — or we can plug into a big PA and rock the house.”

Kevin Ransom is a free-lance writer who covers music for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at KevinRansom10@aol.com.

Eastern Blok perfoming live in Illinois earlier this year: