Dynamo in The Indo's 'Red Bulletin'

Dynamo aka Steven Frayne featured in The Irish Independent's Red Bulletin on Wednesday 9th September 2009.  You can read the piece below.

The street magician from the streets has the skills to make your head spin and his shoelaces tie themselves unaided. How on earth does he do it?

“If you were really magic, then that’s what you’d do. And I am really magic, so that’s what I do.” 

“I love learning from the old masters, but I have to be up to date! It’s not like I particularly want to ruin a classic. My main aim is to make it better. When I used to read about magicians, I used to think they were guys who would just create miracles totally unplanned you know? Just pick up a phone and put it inside a bottle because they felt like it. So that’s how I think magic should be presented.

During tonight’s show Dynamo traps an audience member’s mobile phone in a glass bottle, turns lottery tickets into bank notes with the flick of a wrist, and incorporates the Dynamo-shuffle, a card cut that’s half breakdance and half mind-mangling feat of physics into the act. His new takes on old standards means he’s pushing magic away from its traditional roots. Does he not fear leaving behind some of the mystique?

“Paul Daniels was a gangsta!” laughs the scrawny figure clad in chunky Adidas trainers, baggy jeans and a trackie top. It’s not really the attire you’d expect of one of the world’s great practitioners of the dark arts, and nor is the joke part of his usual style. Dynamo, aka Steven Frayne, or ‘D’, as close friends refer to him, rarely shifts an indifferent steely gaze, and it can be unnerving. (Is it part of his act? Should the guy be left alone to prepare?) But every now and then, he cracks the odd grin and we’re back in the room. On this occasion, it follows the suggestion that Debbie McGee’s better half now struggles to retain an air of credibility.

“He’s still a legend,” he explains, reclining in a booth in London’s Met Bar, about 30 minutes before he’s due to perform there. “He just didn’t know when to retire, that was the problem. He could’ve left on top, but you get stuck into this and you don’t ever want to lose it. People like Paul Daniels showed me what you can achieve by following magic. He was a national celebrity. So if he can do it, why can’t I?”

Dynamo is being modest. This 26-year-old has achieved in five years what most magicians struggle to do their whole careers. Raised on Bradford’s notorious Delph Hill Estate, he has spent more than a decade and a half working at his skills, and while David Blaine seems trapped in a disappearing trick up his own backside, Dynamo has brought the spectacular back to street level.

After moving to London and buying a camera and laptop with a Prince’s Trust loan, in 2005, Dynamo began gatecrashing celebrity parties and wowing the slack-jawed likes of Chris Martin, Snoop Dogg and Ian Brown with his close-up magic. All who saw him expressed the now commonplace reaction on seeing one of his tricks, one that falls somewhere between “Amazing!” and “SH********”!!!”.

The resulting DVD of his efforts, Underground Magic, led to a Channel 4 TV special, Dynamo’s Estate of Mind, and now his internet show DynamoTV takes the no-frills thrills even further, hanging out with De La Soul in Miami, wowing musicians at Glastonbury and freaking out Wu-Tang Clan rapper Raekwon. He’s also worked parties in the Hollywood Hills with Paris Hilton and made a cameo appearance on Snoop Dogg’s Father Hood on MTV.

“I call them my uncles,” he says of the hip-hop elite that queues up to offer him advice on the fame game. Perhaps they see similarities to their own stories of coming from hard-fought beginnings, but it was a genuine blood relative, Dynamo’s grandfather, who first inspired the 10-year-old Frayne to study magic

“My grandpa wasn’t a magician, he was a pool hustler,” he says. “He was in the army, and he did tricks to keep the rest of the troops entertained. When he got out it was just after World War II, everything was tight back then, so he used tricks to win a few extra quid. I’ve got ‘Grandpa’ tattooed on my neck. He’s always looking over my shoulder.”

Dynamo then demonstrates that first trick he learned, a confidence scam using just a matchbox. In under a minute he’s sold Red Bulletin a £20 note for £30. It’s not showy, just ruthless and almost scarily efficient.

“I’m inspired by genuine pickpockets. Not people who do it for entertainment: people who genuinely rob you! There’s a guy, Apollo Robbins, who stole guns from the holsters of the Secret Service agents guarding ex-President Jimmy Carter. He does it for entertainment now, but he’s the real deal. He’s a bit of an enigma.”