Twine

Ordinarily, when band members relocate to opposite coasts, it spells the end of their group. But normalcy seldom applies to Twine, the locally born avant-garde electronic-music duo of Chad Mossholder and Greg Malcolm, who have carried on despite separately departing Cleveland in 2002 and 2003, respectively. Mossholder eventually settled in San Diego, Malcolm in Baltimore -- but far from stunting Twine's growth, the move has been greeted with a steady rise in notoriety.

"We are now on Ghostly International and couldn't be happier with the decision to sign with them," Malcolm says in an e-mail. "In the space of a year and a half, we've toured Western and Eastern Europe, performing alongside some big names in the electronic music world: Panasonic, Plaid, Kit Clayton, Komet, Monolake, and Kid606. We did a U.S. West Coast tour last winter that kicked up a lot of interest, and Twine also performed at the CMJ and SXSW festivals as well. Twine got honorable mention in the Prix Ars Electronica Awards (Austrian Broadcasting Company), and the reception we got for our last album, Twine, was something we could never have anticipated. It made big inroads to the goth/industrial crowds, the IDM/ electronic scene, and the indie/post-rock scene to a degree."

These days, e-mail is the duo's primary form of collaboration. But with plenty of family and friends still in Cleveland, Twine is returning for the holidays and will be playing a pair of shows.

"Both Chad and I really work with unfinished statements that are given meaning with the other's creative input," Malcolm explains. "It would be too simple to say that we just remix each other's work. I think our approach really shows up in how our music really reflects both of our personalities -- sometimes abstract, sometimes melodic, sometimes more straightforward, sometimes subtle."

The Cleveland shows should provide a taste of the bewitching IDM and dark, spectral soundscapes of the band's forthcoming album, Violets.

"I think with our upcoming album, the sound has really come together," Malcolm says. "The last few albums, and especially with Twine, we really hit some kind of stride between the many influences and techniques that we had been working on for years. I feel that we've taken it to the next level, at least for ourselves, with the synthesis of guitar-based post-rock-punk, the scientific-meets-soundtrack approach of IDM, and the composition style of academic music. We're always listening to new things and keeping an open ear and mind to everything we encounter."