SF Bay Area multi-instrumentalist Mark Grossman – who moonlights as a chip designer and once sang alongside Pavarotti – released After a Fashion on January 30th via his own Nondiscordant Music label. It’s his most ambitious record yet, a ten-track album that pulls from trip-hop, dream pop, neo soul, synth pop, and progressive rock without treating any of them as a home base. The title is a double meaning: approximating something, and a literal style. Grossman describes the songs as exploring the “scary edges of romance” – dark romance as a thread – with guest vocals from South Africa’s Nolo and Indian classical vocalist Shruthi Aiyar adding further texture to what is already a restlessly eclectic record.
From the very first song on the album, “Man on a Wire” Mr. Grossman demonstrates his ingenious usage of harmony to create dreamy soundscapes – the colour palettes shift like a gradient from dark to light, all while the textures provide this distinct airy feel that makes it seem like we’re flying but not soaring, flying gently through gentle pink clouds. The listing on Apple Music categorizes this album as pop, but as we move to the second song, it becomes clear that this album is anything but pop. “Isn’t It Romantic” is like an avant garde fusion between trip-hop and vocal jazz of the 60s.
“Put a Scarf” feels like a marriage between 90s soul music and a Chick Corea song. The lyrics are very striking and very much are about pouring one’s heart out about personal insecurities, and the soulful vocal deliveries really help the delivery of such lyrics, and the harmony stays conventional for most of the song’s runtime to support this heartfelt outpour of emotion. But it evolves as the song goes on and gets spicier and more intense as the song builds to its climax.
⇒ Check our interview with Mr. Grossman here.
“Spice Tree” is appropriately full of spice with weird, slightly detuned synth lines and unconventional chord changes. “Blow Me Away” is instantly recognizable as a song inspired by the 90s trip-hop movement with its choice of textures and the way the vocals are mixed, and obviously the rhythmic devices at play. While “Fingertips” offers more of a Brazilian pop vibe with its harmonic choices, like a bossa nova with a more modern straight-ahead rhythm section. As you can see the album shifts genres almost every song like a chameleon that adapts its colors to the song’s narrative.
After a Fashion is the kind of record that rewards repeat listens precisely because it refuses to stay in one place. Grossman has been putting out material since 2022, and the range has always been there, but this album feels like the fullest expression of it yet – ten songs that cover serious ground without ever feeling scattered. For anyone with an appetite for music that doesn’t fit neatly into a single box like so many of our own emotions, this one is worth your time.
