We’re so very proud to share the debut release from California-based duo Ragger – coming out February 10th, 2026 on CD, tape, and digitally:
Marc Riordan and Jon Leland make music together under the name Ragger. Each are multi-instrumentalists and avid collaborators in their wide artistic practices: Riordan performed and collaborated with the likes of The Cairo Gang, The Red Krayola, Xiu Xiu, Owls, and Joshua Abrams before moving from his longtime home of Chicago to LA, while Leland performed with Janka Nabay and the Bubu Gang, Glasser, Amen Dunes, Steve Gunn, and Skeletons before moving from New York to LA and then to the Bay Area to begin a career in video game development. The two began collaborating in 2017 after being invited by Cameron Stallones to form the current trio lineup of his long-running luminary experimental project Sun Araw, with Riordan handling bass and lead synth parts and Leland on electronic drum kit. They formed Ragger shortly after meeting, performing as a duo for a bi-weekly residency in the front café of the noted experimental venue Zebulon in LA, with a very specific scope of material in mind: the ragtime compositions of Scott Joplin and his contemporaries, presented in synthetic tones for synthesizers and electronic V drums. Hausu Mountain is proud to introduce Ragger to the world with their first album of recordings in this style, Euphonic Sounds.
While Hausu Mountain has always highlighted an interest in “carnivalesque” music, from the gonzo cyborg experiments of Wobbly to the sideshow psychedelia of Mondo Lava to the tongue-in-cheek freneticism of Jetski’s sample collages, Ragger’s Euphonic Sounds sets the carnival trapeze higher than anything else in the label’s catalog, while also honoring HausMo’s abiding love for 16-bit video game sounds and imagery. For label heads Doug Kaplan and Max Allison, Ragger’s own elevator pitch for their music as “Scott Joplin in Super Mario World” seemed too good to be true on paper – somehow too dialed into the label’s aesthetics to ever land successfully in practice. But guess what? Riordan and Leland nailed it. Euphonic Sounds overflows with whimsy and joy as much as a brand of casual virtuosity in service of the intricacies of music composed over a century ago. While ragtime might nominally be catalogued closer to “classical music” by today’s listeners, its deep roots weave into the origins of jazz, blues, pop, and dance music. We hear Ragger tease these threads out while transplanting the style into modern tones and ideas from the perspective of the avant-underground, attesting to the passion that the duo has for this music and the lengths they were willing to stretch themselves both mentally and physically to perform it at this level.
