Masquerade of Shadows — The Curtain Rises
- Mickey Fingers
- Sep 14
- 6 min read
Updated: Oct 1
Tea & Mickey Fingers in Conversation
Tea: Remember when you first pulled that idea out of my journals? I thought you were joking.
Mickey Fingers: (laughs) I wasn’t joking. I knew there was a concept album hiding in those pages. You were just too close to see it.
Tea: You had me working on it back when the Artist’s Way group was still fresh at the start of Covid. I thought it was just writing exercises to get me going again.
Mickey Fingers: It was that; but also more. I could see the dark fairytale you were weaving. All it needed was a stage, some fire, and, you know… my Mickey Magic.
Tea: (grins) Of course you’d say that. And let’s be honest, Gifts From the Sirens planted the seed. That was basically three EPs’ worth of demos, experiments, and play. A cabaret playground.
Mickey Fingers: Exactly. Masquerade of Shadows bloomed from there. One day we were talking about how much we’d love to do a Halloween album, and that was it. Spark, goal, obsession.
Tea: You kept telling me, “Expand on this, expand on that.” And I was just in expansion mode.
Mickey Fingers: (grinning) That’s because I knew there was more in you. Every time you thought the story was finished, I could hear the echoes that weren’t written yet.
Tea: (laughs) And I just remember saying, “How will we bridge this? How will we bridge that?” The ghosts make it complicated!
Mickey Fingers: Complicated, yes. But that’s where the magic lives.
Tea: Next thing I knew, we had re-writes. Then suddenly it wasn’t just ten tracks anymore... it was twenty.
Mickey Fingers: And the last fourteen?
Tea: (smiling) Those were the parts not even spoken in the story yet. That’s when I realized this wasn’t just an album... it was a whole world.
Origins
Back in March 2020, at the start of the pandemic, Mickey started tossing me writing prompts to get my pen moving again. What began as simple exercises in our Artist’s Way group blossomed into something larger.
I called the project “Gala Violet,” naming it after the lyric journal I’d kept in high school, one that Mickey was the only person I ever shared with back in 1987/88.
When we found each other again, Mickey asked if I was still writing. The truth was, I hadn’t been. Trauma had silenced my voice for years, and I felt unsafe to write or sing. But Mickey held a space for me to start again. In that space, I found healing for the younger me (the 19–23-year-old self who had been hurt).
And it wasn’t just me. Soon we realized we were all carrying stories of stifled voices, passions turned aside, trauma hidden under the surface. Gala Violet became not just a band, but a circle of support and collaboration, proof that creative healing is possible, together.
From Seeds to Masquerade
We began experimenting with music: I wrote lyrics, Mickey played with Ableton Live, synths, drums, piano, guitar, and bass. Gifts from the Sirens became our sandbox, part cabaret, part demo reel, part experiment.
But then, one notebook changed everything. I was writing a dark fairytale, a way to explore shadow safely. Mickey saw more than pages. He told me: This is a concept album. I didn’t believe it. He did.
The more we worked, the clearer it became: my soul had poured onto those pages, and the music was calling it into form. What began as “maybe a Halloween album” grew into a full-blown gothic cabaret world. Ten songs turned to twenty. Twenty turned to thirty-four. Suddenly, we weren’t just making an album... we were building a masquerade.
The Road to 34 Scenes
The process was messy, beautiful, exhausting, and hilarious. As spoonies, we wrestled with our limits while also overreaching constantly.
Zoom marathons turned into glitch festivals. Rewrites stacked on rewrites. Gummy haze breakthroughs led to late-night funeral waltzes that somehow became séance lullabies.
We fought with ghosts, laughed about how “the ghosts make it complicated,” and learned to step back when we pushed too far.
And through it all, the masquerade stitched itself together... not just an album, but a storyworld.
... And at last, the curtain is ready to rise...
Invitation to the Masquerade
The curtain is rising. Everyone wears a mask. No one leaves unchanged.
Album Release: October 24, 2025
Singles leading the way:
Picnic for the Wicked —
September 19, 2025
Mirror Mirror (On the Ceiling) — October 3, 2025
Boom, Boom, Boom —
October 17, 2025
The Companion Book
Alongside the album comes a companion book to pull back the curtain even further. Inside you’ll find:
Playbill — introducing band ↔ character roles.
Pre-story — a glimpse into the world before the curtain.
Storybook (34 scenes) — the cabaret itself, scene by scene.
Post-story — reflections after the final bow.
Character stories — truths, illusions, and puppet-strings revealed.
Symbolism Cabinet — where the images, artifacts, and hidden threads of the masquerade are explained.
Lyrics — book versions, stylized and full.
Extras — letters, mixtapes, wedding invitations, and other treasures too strange (and too beloved) to leave behind.
This isn’t just a lyric book — it’s an invitation to live inside the masquerade.
Playbill Summary
In a decadent world on the brink of collapse, secrets are currency and performance is survival.
In a decadent world on the brink of collapse, secrets are currency and performance is survival.
Masquerade of Shadows follows masked heirs, haunted debutantes, puppet-bound saints, and fractured lineages feeding a hidden power beneath velvet and gold.
As revolution stirs outside the gates, the youngest struggle to rewrite the story — while the true puppet master waits.
Some fight to escape the cycle. Others fight to survive it. But no one escapes untouched..
The curtain is rising. Everyone wears a mask. No one leaves unchanged.
Gala Violet – Band & Production Credits
Music & Lyrics
Tea, Mickey Fingers, Silent Mike
Story & Book
Tea & Mickey Fingers
(based on Tea’s journals, adapted and expanded for stage and album)
Final Edits & Writing Support
Silent Mike (Ashen Quill)
Production, Arrangement & Engineering
Mickey Fingers — primary engineer, producer, Ableton Live wizardry, mixing & mastering
Tea — co-producer, percussion, finishing touches
Instruments
Mickey Fingers — piano, guitar, bass guitar, drums, synths, sampling, sound design
Belle — strings
Collin — stand-up bass
Tea — percussion, auxiliary instruments
Silent Mike — arrangements, textures, editing support
Ensemble Vocals
All members of Gala Violet (Mickey’s Magic)
(Belle, Tea, Charlotte, Mickey Fingers, Collin, Silent Mike, The Third Mike)
Album Art & Book Art
Tea Mickey Fingers
Masquerade of Shadows: What It Is
A dark fairytale, stitched into cabaret.
A theatrical gothic pop experiment with Victorian shadows.
An album, a book, and a world where no mask stays in place for long.
Genre & Style:
Dark Cabaret / Theatrical Gothic Pop / Victorian Goth / Dark Fairytale
Influences: vaudeville, circus noir, cabaret, baroque pop, glam, score composition
Spiritual Ancestors: Kate Bush, Nine Inch Nails (The Fragile), Danny Elfman, Siouxsie, Bowie (Outside), Dresden Dolls, Soap&Skin, Tori Amos (Boys for Pele)
🎥 Outtakes from the Masquerade (Zoom Edition)
Tea: “Wait, can you hear me? …Now? …Great, now the ghosts are unmuted.”
Mickey Fingers: “Every time we said ten tracks, another three appeared.”
Silent Mike: “You’re frozen.”
Tea: “No, I’m not—” (screen glitches, appears as four heads).
Mickey Fingers: “Cabaret poltergeist confirmed.”
Tea: “Okay, no funeral waltzes after midnight.”
Mickey Fingers: “Agreed. Seance lullabies only.”
Expansion mode was dangerous, but also where the magic lived.
Side Quests & Coffee Breaks
Mickey Fingers adds:
“We actually wrote more music than lyrics. Scenes zigged and zagged, moods and transitions demanded different elements, and that’s where Silent Mike’s musical theater mastery really saved us. He swooped in with rewrites, chord progressions, and fresh structures that stitched the chaos into something whole. Of course, all that experimenting left us with a heap of extra cabaret bundles, odd clips, and half-
finished delights.
And then came the side quest: Necromancy Coffee. ‘It brings us back to life…’ started as a joke jingle in one of our delirious late-night sessions, and the next thing we knew, it had its own legs. Out of that madness, the Necromancy Coffee House EP was born, a quirky break from the shadows, stitched together from the parts we loved but couldn’t fit into the main masquerade. We were all so wrapped up in the dark cabaret vibes, it just… made sense.”
☕ Special Thanks
Tea jumps in: “We absolutely have to thank Karly & A. Joseph of Necromancy Coffee; they were the spark for the whole jingle experiment. What started as a playful ‘you need a jingle’ moment turned us into loyal fans of their brew (and gave us way too much fun in the process). Honestly, without them, the Necromancy Coffee House EP might never have been conjured. Proof that sometimes, side projects really do bring us back to life.”
Invitation to the Masquerade
The curtain is rising. Everyone wears a mask. No one leaves unchanged.
✨ Pre-save Picnic for the Wicked — Sept 19
🪞 Pre-save Mirror Mirror (On the Ceiling) — Oct 3
💥 Pre-save Boom Boom Boom — Oct 17
🎭 Pre-save Masquerade of Shadows (Full Album) — Oct 24
(Album covers embedded, each one clickable.)
“This isn’t just an album. It’s a masquerade stitched from trauma, laughter, ghosts, and the fire of making art when everything else tried to stop us.
We’re so glad you’re here. Take your mask, step into the story, and let the shadows dance.”
-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.
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