🎭 Masquerade of Shadows: A Dark Fairytale Cabaret
- Mickey Fingers
- Sep 14, 2025
- 6 min read
Updated: Dec 6, 2025
🎙️ 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 made it complicated!
Mickey Fingers:
Complicated, yes, but that’s where the magic lives.
Tea:
Next thing I knew, we had rewrites. 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 I only ever shared with Mickey back in 1987/88.
When we found each other again, he asked, “Are you still writing?”
The truth? I wasn’t.
Trauma had silenced my voice for years. But Mickey held a space for me to try again.
In that space, I found healing... not just for myself, but for the younger me who had been hurt.
And it wasn’t just me.
We realized we were all carrying stories: stifled voices, passions turned aside, trauma buried deep.
Gala Violet became more than a band. It became a circle of collaboration and healing.
🕯️ From Seeds to Masquerade
We began experimenting:
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 spellbook.
But then came one notebook that changed everything.
I was writing a dark fairytale, a way to explore shadow safely. Mickey looked at those pages and said:
“This is a concept album.”
I didn’t believe it.
He did.
Soon, 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?
Messy. Beautiful. Exhausting. Hilarious.
As Spoonies, we wrestled with our limits and often overreached.
Zoom marathons glitched into ghost-fests.
Rewrites piled into harmony stacks.
Breakthroughs came in gummy hazes.
And late-night funeral waltzes somehow became séance lullabies.
We fought with ghosts.
We laughed about how the ghosts made it complicated.
We learned when to step back and when to dig deeper.
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
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)
☕ Side Quests & Coffee Breaks
Mickey Fingers Adds:
“We actually wrote more music than lyrics. Scenes zigged and zagged, moods demanded new transitions... and that’s where Silent Mike’s musical theater brain 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. The next thing we knew, it had its own legs. Out of that madness came the Necromancy Coffee House EP, a quirky little break from the shadows, stitched from the parts we loved but couldn’t fit into the main masquerade.We were all so deep in the dark cabaret spell… it just made sense.”
☕ Special Thanks
Tea Adds:
“We have to thank Karly & A. Joseph of Necromancy Coffee, they were the spark for the whole jingle moment. What started as a playful ‘you need a jingle’ turned us into loyal fans of their brew (and gave us way too much fun in the process). Honestly, without them, the 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 the Singles:
🧺 Picnic for the Wicked — Sept 19
🪞 Mirror Mirror (On the Ceiling) — Oct 3
💥 Boom Boom Boom — Oct 17
🎭 Masquerade of Shadows (Full Album) — Oct 24
(Album covers embedded, each one clickable.)
📖 The Companion Book
Alongside the album comes a companion book to pull back the curtain even further. Inside you’ll find:
🎭 Playbill — band ↔ character roles
🪞 Pre-story — a glimpse before the curtain
🎤 Storybook (34 scenes) — the cabaret itself
🕯️ Post-story — what lingers after the final bow
🧵 Character stories — truths, illusions, and strings
🎁 Symbolism Cabinet — artifacts, imagery, and Easter eggs
🎶 Lyrics — full stylized book versions
💌 Extras — letters, mixtapes, wedding invites, and other strange treasures 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.
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.
🎙️ Gala Violet — Band & Production Credits
Music & Lyrics
Tea, Mickey Fingers, Silent Mike
Story & Book
Tea & Mickey Fingers
(based on Tea’s journals, adapted for stage & album)
Final Edits & Writing Support
Silent Mike (Ashen Quill)
Production, Arrangement & Engineering
Mickey Fingers — lead engineer, producer, Ableton wizard
Tea — co-producer, percussion, finishing magic
Instruments
Mickey — piano, guitar, bass, drums, synths, sampling
Belle — strings
Collin — stand-up bass
Tea — percussion, aux instruments
Silent Mike — arrangements, textures, edits
Ensemble Vocals
All members of Gala Violet
(Belle, Tea, Charlotte, Mickey, Collin, Silent Mike, The Third Mike)
Album & Book Art
Tea & Mickey Fingers
💀 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: “Cabaret poltergeist confirmed.”
Tea: “Okay, no funeral waltzes after midnight.”
Mickey: “Agreed. Séance lullabies only.”
Expansion mode was dangerous… but that’s where the magic lived.
🕯️ Final Word from Mickey
“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 inside Ableton Live.
Equal parts mystery and mischief, he’s a steady hand in the chaos and a spark in the shadows.
You’ll find him behind the curtain, buried in reel-to-reels and synth smoke.
📖 A Glimpse Behind the Velvet Curtain
Exclusive zine-style previews of the Masquerade storybook.(Click To View Or Download!)
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