E-Saggila

Toronto-based artist Rita Mikhael produces noisy, atmospheric techno under the name E-Saggila. Initially appearing via a series of cassettes on her own Summer Isle label, which she co-founded in 2014, she quickly attracted the attention of the experimental electronic underground, and made her debut on U.K. label Opal Tapes with 2016's Old Orders of Beauty. BANK Records NYC issued her first vinyl releases, including the 2017 EP Tools of My Purpose and 2018 full-length Dedicated to Sublimity. Mikhael was born in Iraq, but grew up in Toronto during the Gulf War. Always an outcast, she gravitated toward harsh noise, industrial, techno, and especially Muslimgauze. She began making noise and power electronics as RM (her initials) in 2014, then debuted her industrial techno project E-Saggila with the 2015 cassette Devotion. Numerous other tapes appeared, and two releases for Opal Tapes, 2016's Old Orders of Beauty and 2017's Lux Campaign, helped expand her audience outside of the Toronto scene. Her vinyl debut, 2017's Tools of My Purpose (on BANK Records NYC), contained some of her hardest tracks yet. This was followed by the complex yet equally destructive 2018 full-length Dedicated to Sublimity. My World My Way, inspired by gabber, industrial, and power electronics, was released by Northern Electronics in 2019. ~ Paul Simpson, Rovi