Issue 22 - September 08
MindStorms
Sean Taylor
Available from: www.taylorsmagicshop.com
Price: $99.95 Aus Dollars (approx.£46.00)
219 9" x 6" pages, hardbacked with 13 black and white photo
illustrations
Englishman Sean Taylor is a professional performer and
magic dealer who emigrated to Australia back in 1993 and who has managed since
then to carve out a successful career for himself down under performing
corporate stand up shows, kids show bookings, restaurant close up and trade show
work. But in the last few years his presentations have taken on a new
perspective as he has graduated to performing almost exclusively pure mentalism.
This book brings together both advice and routines from Sean's professional
mentalism shows, and a real treat it is too.
The book is divided into six broad chapters. Chapter 1 is
entitled Crossing Over and is an extended series of essays covering what it
means to be a pure mentalist (as opposed to someone who does a bit of mentalism
in an otherwise magic act) and how to present appropriate material in a way that
is in keeping with this style of performance. His advice is wide ranging,
covering as it does everything from the type of material to use, how to present
it properly, how to deal with audiences and volunteers in particular, how to
make a professional business out of it all and much more. Here speaks the voice
of experience and I thought this was a particularly strong section of the book.
Chapter 2 deals with a special two-way envelope called a
Pro Envelope. Sean explains how to make it and gives a number of examples of how
it can be used.
Chapter 3 is entitled The Classics, and covers Sean's
versions of Just Chance, the book test, David Hoy's Tossed Out Deck, a newspaper
prediction and the chair prediction. Every single one of these effects has
clearly been used many times by Sean and his explanations are extremely
thorough. His methods are sometimes very simple, as is the case with the Just
Chance routine, at other times they can be relatively complex, as shown with the
Chair Prediction method, but either way they have clearly been honed by
performance and they create clear plot lines and unfathomable methods.
Chapter 4 offers three items suitable for Stage Mentalism.
Pineapple Surprise, in which a spectator manages to correctly reveal the
contents of an un-labelled tin of food, is the pick of these in my opinion -
very easy to do, a bit different and with several alternative methods explained.
With Chapter 5 Sean moves on to describe four effects for
what he calls Parlour Mentalism. Of these I especially liked Time For Business
which is a sneaky method for apparently being able to state the exact time at
any moment in the show chosen by a spectator. This is quirky and unusual and
capable of a number of different methods and presentations.
The final Chapter, no. 6, centres on Sean's marketed
product The Symbology Deck. Released a couple of years or so ago, this is a
specially designed deck of symbols which has been cleverly organised to enable
you to perform a large number of different routines with a deck that creates a
lot more interest and intrigue than perhaps a regular deck of cards. Apart from
plugging the deck and encouraging you to buy it, Sean provides four new effects
which were not included in the original instruction booklet.
One of the good things about this book is that with the
exception of Chapter 6, virtually all of the routines described in the book you
will be able to make up. In other words, you will not need to invest in large
amounts of expensive equipment in order to perform Sean's mentalism. His magic
is deliberately not prop orientated, which means that most of the explained
material you will have a fair chance to try.
In his Epilogue at the end of MindStorms Sean hints that
this may well only be the first of more books on mentalism, and if future
publications live up to this one, they will definitely be worth waiting for. In
the meantime, anyone who wants to learn how to be a pure mentalist should get
this book and practice what Sean preaches. ML
What's Hot
: Excellent advice and top, practical routines
What's Not: The 'dealer dem' at the end, although the deck is great so you
probably should get it anyway!
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