Magic Tricks

A lot of people look down on "self working" tricks as somehow less professional, but to paraphrase John Bannon: So what? If it's a powerful trick then the audience--unfamiliar with the technique anyway-- doesn't care, even if the performer might not have quite as much personal satisfaction from overcoming performance challenges.

Liam (who, perhaps noncoincidentally, has been the "student" on at least a couple of Bannon projects) is enthusiastic and professional, and the production values are those of BBM's usual high standards.

Moreover, all of the tricks on this disc are impressive to laypeople, though a couple are a bit long-winded and could use better patter. With polishing, any could be used by a professional, but they're also all very easy to do, even for someone with literally no experience. The impromptu nature of these tricks is particularly helpful for casual situations when someone asks for a trick and hands you a tattered pack of cards, since nothing kills the mood like replying "ok, give me two minutes" (to go do a deck stack) or can't exercise your favorite sleights. Any any tricks where the audience gets to shuffle automatically gains points in my book.

I would caution, though, about the setups required--even though they're impromptu, most of the tricks use a particular force that magicians will recognize immediately, in order to set the initial conditions. Laypeople probably won't reconstruct it if they see it once, but DON'T expect to be able to do multiple tricks off this disc in a row, since there's a good chance even laypersons will be able to recognize the force after a couple of times seeing it. Since the target audience for this disc is beginners looking for strong and easy effects (which they will definitely get), they may not realize that performing such an obvious force several times in a row is equivalent to doing the same trick twice, and so without modification they can't really make a routine just from these effects without risking exposure--and that probably should have been explained better, hence the 1 star off.

But in reality, if you recognize that problem, you'll have a five star resource of strong and easy magic at your disposal, and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this to anyone.