Gramatically understand "make more and more of an impression on.."

The case I want to understand is "Japanese musician YOSHIKI is making more and more of an impression on the British royal family". As I understand it, it says YOSHIKI is impressing the British royal family members more and more. But what I don't understand is the grammar detail.

Is "making more and more of an impression" the comparative of "making much of an impression"? In that case, how should I understand "making much of an impression"? Is it a combination of "making an impression" and "much of", or alternatively, a combination of "making much of" and "an impression"?

From what I learnt from the internet, "much of" is "used for describing the importance of a quality that something has" and "make much of" means "to give a lot of importance to something". I can't see anyone is giving an importance on the thing of impressing some one else. Thenceforth, I prefer the "making an impression" + "much of" assumption. But I still can't understand it. What does the "much of" mean here? I can understand what "not much of a" means but what "much of" means is still unclear. What does it actually mean in this context?

Glad you can bear the reading. Love you :)


Cambridge explains that

When we use much or many before articles (a/an, the), demonstratives (this, that), possessives (my, your) or pronouns (him, them), we need to use of.

There is the set phrase is more​/​less​/​much of a something, and as you can see, it can be combined with comparatives:

used for describing the importance of a quality that something has

  • It was really more of a comment than a question. (Macmillan)

As for your example, it is a combination of the phrase more and more and the set phrase I just explained, to show that the impression made does not cease to increase.