Before she decided to focus on music full-time, Rita Mikhael studied medical aesthetics at a school in Toronto, where she learned about "very invasive" procedures like chemical peels and facial reconstruction. Like those procedures, the music she's made since then is not for the faint of heart. As E-Saggila, Mikhael builds on her background in harsh noise and analog improvisations to create claustrophobic and densely layered techno. During her Boiler Room debut earlier this summer, host and fellow Toronto producer Sylvermayne aptly introduced her as "true darkness, fire and brimstone." She then proceeded to play a blistering set of gabber, breakcore and power violence. The vocalist Brant Boshart, in fingerless gloves and a shirt that read "HARDCORE LIVES: E-SAGGILA," joined her to growl over her pummeling beats. By then, only a handful of strong-stomached dancers remained on the floor.

"When you hit that perfect bassline you literally feel it in your chest," Mikhael told me. "When I play, I love to play as loud as possible. I think that in a way is definitely confrontational to me."

From her early, self-released tapes under the alias RM, to records on leftfield labels like Aught Void, BANK Records NYC and Opal Tapes, the 26-year-old Iraq-born producer has accomplished a lot in a short period of time. All the while, she's been utterly unafraid to challenge audiences. She started the experimental electronic and industrial-focussed cassette label Summer Isle in 2014 with her partner Max Klebanoff, who plays drums in the Toronto death metal group Tomb Mold and solo as Death Kneel. Since then, they've put out 60 releases by artists from Canada and abroad. Known for their outré sounds and stark, monochromatic cover art, the limited-edition cassettes, which frequently sold out, introduced listeners to E-Saggila's sonically brutal compositions. Mikhael and Klebanoff occasionally threw shows with avant-garde-leaning acts that Toronto's more established bookers and venues wouldn't touch.

Mikhael's range as an artist is striking. In addition to techno, gabber and breakcore, her output draws on ambient, jungle and dancehall influences. This versatility has led to her playing both larger warehouse raves and smaller punk and hardcore venues across Toronto. Likeminded acts with whom she's shared a stage include Toronto hardcore punk band Fucked Up, Palestinian hip-hop artist Muqata'a, and Varg, who released her latest album this year on his label, Northern Electronics.

The seven tracks on My World My Way were born out of Mikhael's live shows, and find her exploring new corridors. "I definitely wanted to make this not like a proper techno album," she told me in Toronto this August. "I don't only listen to underground punk and noise, I'm definitely into mainstream pop and dancehall and reggaeton. It definitely inspires me to work differently and not just have the same foundation of making a techno track. It just helps me to look through a broader spectrum of how to reduce."

Unlike last year's Dedicated To Sublimity, My World My Way features several collaborators. Chicago-based Club Chai affiliate Thoom's shrieks cut through the unrelenting "Alia" like a wounded animal (one of the song's lyrics translates to "deserve like dog" in Arabic). On the closing track, "One Last Midnight," Los Angeles producer Oil Thief delivers an ominous monologue over white noise squalls and phone dial tones.

"Thoom and I actually did a show together in Chicago a couple years ago," Mikhael said. "I think we both have the same views on harsher and harder music, and I thought it was a perfect fit. She's also speaking Arabic and that was really important to me to have that resonate through the track. Oil Thief has been a friend for a while now. It's mostly artists who I enjoy and think should have more exposure than they already have."

Inevitably the topic of our conversation turned to the ongoing challenges facing artists in Toronto. The city is currently facing one of North America's worst affordable-housing crises, and lacks the kind of spaces where promoters can put on shows. "We don't have the fees to rent venues out," she said. "Especially when you're bringing an international artist here, you don't have the money to pay them and the venue, and sometimes you have to rent the PA system."

When she was four years old, Mikhael's family moved to Canada from Baghdad just before the Gulf War, eventually settling in Toronto. Her father (who played guitar and sang in Assyrian folk bands) found work as a general labourer. Her mother opened a hair salon. In high school, Mikhael played in bands but "wasn't crazy about it." After getting into punk, metal and industrial, discovering artists like Coil and Godflesh, she downloaded Ableton, watched some YouTube tutorials and started making her own electronic music. Today she lives at home with her parents and younger sister and records everything in her bedroom studio. She told me that, while she doesn't share her parents' conservative political views, they've been supportive of her career.

"At first they didn't get it, it's too abstract and too weird for them," she said. "But they were really cool after. They're more curious about me playing live, and the physicality of going to these countries and doing all that rather than the music I'm making, which is obviously understandable."

Mikhael once described My World My Way as a "granular assault towards our ecological collapse of systems." The record, she explained, was conceived as a response to the overwhelming experience of our current news cycle. "All this shit is happening with global warming and Trump and wars here and there," she said, "it just never ends, and you feel hopeless and you can't really do anything about it. That's personally how I feel, you're just stuck at a space and it really affects you, and I wanted to put that towards the tracks I was making."

Whether releasing music or performing, it's clear Mikhael isn't interested in compromising for anybody. Last year, she was supposed to play at ://about blank in Berlin, but chose to drop off the bill amid the controversy surrounding the venue's decision to cancel parties and artists in response to the #DJsForPalestine campaign. She recalled a conversation with a promoter who encouraged her to wait until the drama died out before making a decision.

"It was kind of disheartening because a couple people on that lineup, I was like, 'Oh, they're cool,' but then it's just a check for them, they don't really care. I don't see myself as being a fence-sitter or anything like that. What value is it if you don't have any morals or politics within what you're doing? To me, music is definitely political no matter what."

About a month after our conversation, Mikhael announced she was cancelling all remaining tour dates to focus on making music—her last show will be in December at Hospital Fest in Brooklyn. "Trying to get my name around people / promoters who needed convincing to have me on their lineups didn't feel right to me and kind of messed me up among other things," she said. "This industry is pretty detrimental when you just want to simply showcase what you love to people you'll most likely never see again and countries you've never visited. I was put in positions where it felt like a competition among my friends and artists I respect because 'live' sets aren't hyped as much and promoters mainly focus on DJs who can keep the night flowing.”

In the meantime, she's not planning on slowing her output and remains open to new possibilities. "If a big label wants to ask me to do something, I don't see why I wouldn't take the chance on it unless there was some personal issue," she said. Although she and Klebanoff ended Summer Isle in 2018 to concentrate on their own projects (Tomb Mold put out their second LP, Planetary Clairvoyance, this past July on Pittsburgh-based label 20 Buck Spin, followed by two Death Kneel releases this fall), Mikhael said she hopes to start another label. She remains optimistic about Toronto's music scene.

"I think more people are definitely trying to maintain the scene with what little resources they have," she said. "There are still efforts being made and people are passionate about sticking to something. That's why I still believe that we actually need to keep going forward and being hopeful on things getting better. More of the same attitude needs to be kept alive if we want to see change."