Get to know Ciel, the artist and promoter showcasing melodic, off-kilter electro and breakbeat

Toronto might be the birthplace of Drake and Neil Young, but when it comes to dance music the city’s heritage pales in comparison to nearby Detroit’s. But Ciel, real name Cindy Li, is on a one-woman mission to change that. With her female-focused Work In Progress parties and radio show, as well as her work with party collective It’s Not U It’s Me, Ciel is helping transform Toronto into a dance music destination.

Raised in New York, the 33-year-old moved to Canada for school in 2000. And while her classmates were “vanilla, cookie-cutter business students”, she found some joy in the school’s radio station – the oldest radio station in the country, she tells Mixmag over a pint in a South London pub. It was in Canada, inspired by her mother’s feminist leanings and time spent on toxically masculine music message boards (“it’s all dudes saying to the rare woman in those communities that she only got into this music because of a boyfriend”), that she decided to exclusively play music produced by female artists.

She later launched WIP in 2015 with the same intent, originally on the short-lived Toronto Radio Project and now on n10.as. “Everyone was telling me that I wasn’t going to be able to sustain it, and I was like, ‘I totally can!’ she explains.

Tapping into a wider global conversation about women in dance music, she booked Discwoman for the first WIP party a few months later. “It was the most insane response I’d ever seen,” she says. “It was such a high to look up and see all of these women and queer people dancing.” But while the parties have continued with resounding success, they’ve also acted as a catalyst for her own career.

Ciel has DJ’d since she was 18; in fact, she once tied with a vinyl d’n’b DJ at a campus DJ competition using “shitty Numark CDJs”, she shyly recalls. But these parties helped define the high-octane sets that have regularly taken her to the US as well as on a first European tour, playing the likes of ://about blank, Hope Works and Bloc. Her sets rely on a mixture of breakbeat and electro, but always with a focus on melody. “I like combining pretty things with really ugly or abrasive things,” she says. This contrast has defined her production work too, such as on her debut EP for Shanti Celeste’s Peach Discs, which contrasts snappy drums with dreamlike pads.

But while Ciel has caught the attention of the world, her heart remains in her home town. “I’ve lost count of the number of times people have told me I should leave,” she says. “But why would I leave? I’m proving everyone wrong!”

Charlie Case is Mixmag's Staff Writer, follow him on Twitter

‘Electrical Encounters’ is out now on Shanti Celeste’s Peach Discs