Order Out of Chaos by Patrick Redford

A little while ago we were discussing the Triumph plot on the server regarding what was and what wasn’t counted as being a Triumph. I mentioned although I did a triumph like effect, I didn’t do any ‘proper’ triumphs. So when I was asked to review Patrick Redford’s new effect, that just happened to be one, I jumped at the chance.

What is Order Out of Chaos?

You start with a seemingly fully mixed deck (in fact it really can be if you want to skip the final kicker), an audience member names any card, you mix the cards on the table some face up some face down, gather the mess of cards up and low and behold they have all righted themselves apart from the chosen card. You do a couple more shuffles and the whole deck is back in NDO

Who is Patrick Redford?

Patrick is a member of a select group of magicians that perform under one name and release magic under the other. Anton (author of A Book, and Start, both of which will be reviewed at some point) and Philip Goldstein (who now also releases stuff under his stage name, but traditionally didn’t) are also members of this group, so Patrick is in great company. Patrick has got some fantastic releases under his belt already. You may know his name from Prevaricator, or the two Out of Order books. His book Cardboard is another item on my ‘to review’ list, so keep an eye out for that. If you don’t already know his work, you really should check him out.

What is taught?

The tuition video is a little over half an hour long, so you know he covers stuff well. He first goes through his crediting. it’s always great to see people take crediting seriously, it really is so important. He teaches a NDO version, then a Si Stebbins version with an alternative ending reveal, and then goes through again in a memdeck order. He uses his own Redford Stack for the last, but the effect isn’t reliant on that stack, I’ll be doing it with Mnemonica.

The effect as shown in the trailer uses a faro at the end, this alone will put many off. I’ve never quite understood why so many magicians are terrified of the faro. But it’s only used in the last phase, which could be dropped if you want, and there is a faro free version also taught that is very nearly as strong as the main one. So even if the faro does frighten you, you needn’t miss out.

He also has a very nice bit on presentation details, again something far too frequently ignored by many releasing magic.

Other thoughts.

One of the things I like most about this is that if you are doing stack work, performing this (minus the last section) doesn’t disrupt the stack at all. Something many, myself included, will find incredibly useful.

Conclusion.

If you want to add a triumph to your repertoire, or update one you already do, you really should consider this one, and at the price Patrick is asking for it, you’d be mad not to. Highly recommended, I like this one a lot.