His store opens at 10 a.m., but at 9:30, Matthew Pfromm sees a curious man with his nose and forehead pressed up against the glass of his storefront door, trying to get a look at what’s inside.
Pfromm gets it. His store, FNōRDiskōrd Rekörds — where he sells strictly vinyl and specializes in titles from independent labels and hard-to-find titles — is literally the new kid on the block. His first day of business was last week.
New businesses always attract curious onlookers, and Pfromm wants to be accommodating. So instead of telling the visitor to come back in 30 minutes, Pfromm unlocks the front door and invites the visitor inside.
“Welcome!” says Pfromm, whose double-pierced lip and shaggy beard suggest the music collection on hand might not be the same as what you’d find at Walmart or Best Buy. Indeed: “There’s no Taylor Swift,” he says.
Pfromm’s store is a welcome addition to what, at times, has been a collection of businesses that give this part of town a bit of an edge. His store — which sells vinyl from bands such as The Mountain Goats, StrFkr and Idles — seems to vibe nicely with nearby neighbors, The Fillin’ Station, Once Read Bookstore, Pulp Comics and Games and Kato Escape.
But while the albums on the shelves may seems interesting, how Pfromm and his wife, Sarah, came to Mankato may even be more so.
The Pfromms were living in Portland when the George Floyd killing happened. Floyd’s death prompted protests and riots across the country, and one of the most volatile areas was Portland. Clashes between opposing groups of angry protesters turned Portland, Pfromm says, into a place he and his family no longer felt safe. Vandalism and looting became common. Police rarely responded to lower-level crimes.
“It wasn’t a pretty sight. Portland changed a lot,” he says. “And then the pandemic hit.”
So they began searching for a new place to live.
After narrowing their options to about 10, their research led them to a place with a low crime rate, good schools, a nearby university and relative proximity to an urban area: Mankato. It checked a lot of their boxes, so they packed up their stuff and hauled the family to Minnesota.
They found the perfect home in lower North Mankato, and Pfromm began looking for a place to set up his record store business.
Regarding the logistics of the store and his interior design, Pfromm says Sarah is the brains behind that. She sketched out the floor plan and created the store’s look. Pfromm is responsible for the buying and selling of records.
Pfromm says his love for vinyl was born years ago when the was living in Lawrence, Kansas, and he started frequenting an independent record store there. His first purchases were albums by Neutral Milk Hotel, Sigur Ros and Nick Drake.
He fell in love with vinyl records, the artwork, the details and the idea of intentional listening.
“I feel like people whose love language is touch or tactile (would love vinyl),” he says. “Even just the smell of records — even used records — there’s this history or story to it. Who owned this before? Who was listening to it? When did they listen to it? What were they thinking when they listened to it? How do I feel? And it just drums up a lot of emotion in that aspect of it.”
Pfromm says he’s got big plans for the place that go beyond retail vinyl. There’s space in the middle of the property he plans to turn into a recording studio. And in the space’s rear, which is now storage for the lumber and other building materials he needs for the retail area, he plans to convert it into rehearsal space, citing anecdotal evidence he’s heard about the need for that in town.
The building the record store is in is owned by Bennett Coughlan, owner and operator of The Fillin’ Station coffeehouse. Coughlan says FNōRDiskōrd Rekörds is a perfect fit for an ever-evolving part of downtown Mankato.
“I was very excited. Not only is he my first-ever commercial lease, he’s a really solid guy and has a big vision and lots of passion. He’s really made the space his and exposed some brick and is making it look really cool inside,” Coughlan says. “I think a record store is exactly the sort of thing to complement the other businesses on the 600 block of South Front. Comics, escape rooms, books, coffee, records — it just makes sense.”
As for the name …
“It’s kind of like some esoteric nerdy stuff. Fnord is something that was mentioned in ‘The Illuminatus Trilogy’ and has to do with discordianism and the goddess of discord, Eris, from Greek mythology. So it’s a little bit of a literary and historic dorky thing that I came up with.
“When you’re a record store, you want to have something that’s unique and kind of stands out,” he says. “This one may be a little bit of a mouthful, but I think once you hear it said a couple of times — FNōRDiskōrd, FNōRDiskōrd — you’ll be like, ‘OK, I gotcha.’”