BIO
"Shaken, not stirred!" With this motto, the folk-pop band The Magic Mumble Jumble kicks off the year 2025.
Photography by Jakob Lauber
The Magic Mumble Jumble – Better Days
Release Date: March 6, 2026
Known for their song “Don’t Forget,” The Magic Mumble Jumble have spent years playing their way into the hearts of an audience that’s looking for more than just the next catchy chorus. Anyone who’s been to a show by the eight-piece ensemble quickly realizes: it’s about community, about lightness, and about not just facing life — but celebrating it. With music that inspires courage and a sound that brings people together.
With their new album Better Days, The Magic Mumble Jumble release their most cohesive and accomplished work to date. A record where everything comes together: musical openness, and a sound that’s clearer, warmer, and more focused than ever before. It’s the next logical step for a band that has long flown under the radar — and is now ready to think bigger. In 2026, they’ll embark on their first full-scale release tour across Germany — with new songs, bigger stages, but the same energy as always.
“Dancing ’cause we know we’re beautiful” — this line from the first single “Beautiful” (out June 20, 2025) opens the journey for a reason. It’s a song about humanity, solidarity, and the deep feeling of connection that can arise when we truly reach out to one another. Not as a performance, but as a principle. An invitation to focus on what unites us — not what divides us.
Musically, Beautiful is a many-voiced anthem with airy harmonies and glowing brass. A song that takes its time, that grows, opens up — and then bursts into a moment of light. The energy: immediate. The message: clear. A statement against right-wing exclusion and for solidarity — a kind of togetherness that doesn’t need a shared origin, language, or religion, just an open heart.
Many of the album’s tracks were written last summer on an old farm in southern Germany. Between writing, silence, and the smell of hay, the idea of Better Days began to take shape. The songs were produced by Robert Stephenson, known for his work with Mighty Oaks, Fil Bo Riva, and Von Wegen Lisbeth.
“He helped us understand what we’ve always been — and what that can sound like,” says singer and songwriter Paul Istance. The music is more spacious than on earlier records, yet also more precise. The songs leave room — for layered vocals, brass, quiet moments — and for topics that feel bigger than one might expect.
The Magic Mumble Jumble reflect on a world that’s speeding up — and respond the way they always have: with open arms and music that connects instead of divides. Better Days is their clearest and most diverse album yet. Because it unites not just sounds, but perspectives. Nothing feels forced, nothing calculated. The songs flow, breathe — and still say something. About community, courage, and what connects us in a world that often seems to be falling apart.
Better Days is the strongest artistic statement The Magic Mumble Jumble have made to date. Not a big concept album — more like an open journal. Personal, playful. If you let it in, it takes you with it — song by song, through highs, doubts, and that rare kind of warmth that stays long after the music fades.
To understand why it sounds the way it does, you have to know where the band comes from. The Magic Mumble Jumble was founded in the Netherlands — a wild group of jazz students who preferred writing songs over rehearsing scales. Their early shows: 20 people in a bus, tambourines, and lots of heart. Over time, the open collective became a steady group of eight musicians.
Since their live debut album in 2016 — recorded with over 60 musicians in the Netherlands — a lot has happened: a celebrated EP (We All Want Sunshine, 2017), a second album (Show Your Love, 2018, produced by Tom Gelissen), a 90-minute live recording from the Burg Herzberg Festival (2019), and a streaming success: Don’t Forget now has over 8 million plays. Maybe because the song captures exactly what the band stands for: joy, humanity, and a warmth that doesn’t need to be loud to be lasting.
Anyone who’s seen them live knows this energy grows even stronger on stage. Their shows aren’t just performances — they’re shared experiences. On some nights, the trombonist stands on the sousaphonist’s shoulders, the line between stage and crowd disappears, and you get a feeling of real connection.
With Better Days, they’re heading out on their biggest release tour yet — eight cities, venues holding 500 to 700 people. It’s the band’s largest tour to date. And yet, it doesn’t feel inflated — just like the right step. Because anyone who’s seen one of their shows knows how quickly a stage becomes a circle — and a night becomes a memory that stays.
Photography by Joel Heyd