Jay Conrad
Mirror City
Mirror City is the left panel of The Sombrayagua Diptych.
The right panel, The Lens of Ibn Sahl, is being written as we speak.
Sombrayagua, the capital of the Royal Federation of Peninsular and Island States – the former Spanish State – in the year 2016.... Commissioner Miqhal Abufalía and her team investigate yet another 'Disappearance on Personal Initiative' – a sociopathic disorder defined in police jargon as a DIP. Book trader Diego Moranetti flies to Barcelona, reading a letter from a certain Nuria Santos Malaboca about the rise and fall of the Second Spanish Republic, and about her contacts with an heir of the medieval Spanish Arabs. As events unfold, the police face a perplexing problem when an enigmatic general takes the visitors of one of the city’s skyscrapers hostage in an attempt to force a rendezvous with Núria...
<= a fragment of 'Aurora' by ©Nel Bothof, to be used for the cover of Mirror City
‘A parable of modern Spain that is prodigious in its scope, imagination and exuberance.’
Tim Steffa, author of Finnish Trench Art
‘A wicked vision of a tormented country. An utterly Spanish work of contrasts. As a Spaniard, I found great pleasure in reading this quite unromantic rendering of a nation’s hopes and despair.’
Pollux Hernuñez, director of Excritos, a Brussels-based publishing house specialized in Spanish literature written abroad
a Spanish music album
(Swing Boss Music)
by Jay Conrad
based on the poetry of Raquel Lanseros
A fierce yet intimate album (to be released only on vinyl, except for the bookshop edition), putting to music the fabulous poetry of Raquel Lanseros (Premio Tren 2011 Antonio Machado). Spanish guitars abound in a Steely Danesque symbiosis of TexMex, Belgo – and cocktail- jazz & Anglo-Saxon ballads.
The more than adequate demos are on:
http://www.jukeboxalive.com/gkliphuis
'Innovating, fresh and well elaborated'.
Gloria Zuñiga, Radio Angeles de la Noche, Granada, Spain
