Child's Play {Toy Boxes & Tape Echoes — How Junk Becomes Symphony}

Mickey's Corner

"Most people look at junk and see trash. I look at it and hear rhythm."

-Mickey Fingers

The Gala Violet sessions started with spoons, a plastic toy drum, and an Orba the size of my palm. Add in a cheap microphone and Ableton Live, and suddenly a kitchen drawer became a cathedral of sound.

Junk percussion was my first teacher.

Pots and pans don’t care about tuning, they care about tone. Each hit gives you a different color. Layer them, pan them, slow them down, and you’ve got an orchestra hiding in plain sight.

Engineering tricks turned whispers into walls. A Fisher-Price xylophone fed through tape echo became a shimmering background pad. A detuned toy piano, EQ’d and buried under reverb, sounded like a ghostly choir. I ran footsteps through reverb tails, claps through distortion, and suddenly, “junk” carried the same weight as a string section.

Ableton Live was the canvas. Every sound (toy or synth) got layered, warped, stretched. The trick isn’t making one sound huge. It’s weaving dozens of tiny, fragile voices together until they sound like something impossible.

Every instrument has a personality. The Orba? It’s like the eccentric cousin who only shows up at midnight but always brings magic. The toy keyboard? A child star, a little out of tune but unforgettable. Put them all together and you’ve got Velvet Umbrella’s heartbeat — a reminder that beauty hides in the overlooked.

Because music isn’t about the tools you have. It’s about what you dare to imagine they could become.

“You wouldn’t believe how good a plastic Fisher-Price xylophone sounds once you detune it and run it through a tape echo. It’s not junk — it’s treasure in disguise. That’s the Velvet Umbrella way.”

-Mickey Fingers

Gala Violet: Bigfoot and Spam {A True Story}

From bedtime fears to primal beats

Bigfoot and Spam didn’t begin in the studio. It began years earlier, when bedtime rituals meant checking under the bed for Bigfoot.

When she was little, Tea had a crush on the Bionic Man, and was captivated by the legendary crossover episode where he battled Bigfoot. Add in late-night AM radio whispering mysterious tales while she tried to fall asleep, and Bigfoot became more than a story: he was a presence. A fascination. A fear. A bedtime ritual.

That childhood obsession eventually resurfaced in the most unexpected way: through music.

When Gala Violet began jamming on what became Bigfoot and Spam, it started with laughter, a balance ball used as a drum, a ten-gallon plastic container flipped over for booming rhythms, and primal, echoing vocals that sounded less like “singing” and more like calling to something ancient. The ridiculous title fit the energy: Bigfoot for the mystery, Spam for the absurd. And together, they became the perfect symbol for how play, fear, and wonder intertwine.

The song carries the pulse of the wild, Bigfoot in the shadows, the unknown lurking at the edge of memory; but it also embraces humor. Because growing up means not only checking under the bed, but laughing at the fear once you know it never really leaves.

And that’s what Bigfoot and Spam is: the story of childhood myths reborn in sound. Primal and playful, spooky and silly. Proof that sometimes the monsters under your bed follow you into adulthood, and if you’re lucky, you get to dance with them.

Big Foot and Spam

Listen Here for Tea's TRUE Story That the Song Is Based On...

-Mickey Fingers

✨ About Mickey Fingers

Mickey Fingers is the co-creator of Velvet Umbrella Records and Gala Violet. A multi-instrumentalist and engineer-producer, he moves between drums, guitar, bass, piano, and synth with ridiculous ease, building worlds in Ableton Live. Equal parts mystery and mischief, he’s a steady hand in the chaos and a spark in the shadows.