Frank Morais plays chill-out and house sets at Poblet de Nadal

Frank Morais, one of Andorra’s leading electronic music figures, plays two sets today at the Neret stage of the Poblet de Nadal in Andorra la Vella, at 13:30 and 19:00. The split bill lets him explore different moods than those typical of his club work.

He describes the midday session as chill-out: a selection of soft, easy-to-listen-to tracks. The evening set moves toward house with a stronger beat. “Daytime music has nothing to do with nighttime music,” he says, adding that a DJ can’t go in planning to play the same thing everywhere. Knowing the venue and the atmosphere is essential.

At midday he chooses relaxed, warm material — soul is a good fit — and gradually raises the tempo as the hours pass. His sets tend to build from less to more intensity. He stresses that the Poblet de Nadal is not a nightclub but an outdoor winter market, which affects choices: it’s cold, people often won’t stay long or dance, and the audience is generally older.

When the crowd doesn’t get up to dance, he looks for other signs of engagement: whether people tap their feet, if they seem comfortable, whether they linger or move on. He experiments by playing three or four tracks in the same vein and gauges the reaction before shifting direction.

Live music is an attraction at the market, he says: it makes people stop, sit and have a beer, a hot chocolate or mulled wine. Without performances, visitors tend to just walk through. Having played the event before gives him an advantage — year after year he learns the tone of the place and the listeners’ tastes. Oldies from the 1980s and 1990s are a reliable choice in this context.

Morais praises the Neret’s musical programming for its variety of styles and formats. Programming singers, instrumentalists and DJs requires different approaches, he notes, but bringing those worlds together produces an enriching result.