As far as online labels go, EN:PEGDIGITAL is pretty damn cool. Since they save themselves a ton of money by not having to press, print, and distribute a physical product, they're able to deliver high quality MP3s of their artists' music for the low, low cost of only $2.00USD/album. Suck on that, iTunes! The formula has allowed the label, an official splinter cell of n5MD, to serve up 37 high quality releases from 30 international artists in the last couple of years.

Saturday night, you can catch a showcase sponsored by EN:PEGDIGITAL at the White Orchid (812 Dundas Street West), featuring live PA sets by cisc, odori, and Famine.

By day, Dan Smith, the producer behind the cisc moniker, is a mild-mannered electronic engineering technology student, but by night - well, to be perfectly honest, there's a heavy workload in that course, but whenever he can actually find the time - he's making music on his computer. One of the coolest things about his version of digital music, besides the fact that it's actually musical, is the fact that it's all put together through deconstructed sounds, "very, very small pieces of sound used to synthesize new sounds," he explains. For example, every sound on the track "Children See Dolphins" was generated by sampling the audio track of an amateur porno flick. The sounds has been broken down and rebuilt so completely there's no way I would've have guessed that all started as lo-fi moans and groans with the occasional slap and tickle.

The end result of this process is a wonderfully warm batch of synth tones that are definitely not presets accompanied by painstakingly hand-sequenced clicky percussion sounds. A self-professed "control-freak," Dan eschews the use of plug-ins that do all the glitchy beat work for you, preferring to have complete control over the final product. He tells me "I'll even program out all my delays" rather than resort to using a simple delay effect. Slightly anal? Yes. Does he use it to his advantage? Definitely.

His cisc set on Saturday night will be complemented by the post-industrial chill of odori and the face-melting death metal/breakcore of Famine. Also expect DJ sets by slo-fi and DJ static vs s:cage with visuals by notafarm. Cover is $5.00 at the door, show starts at 10, and the first 15 people there will get free EN:PEGDIGITAL downloads. Bonus!

Photo by flickr user machine gun of loving kindness.