The question remains: Who is whistling in Isles of Wonder?

[Spoomy]

From what I can gather, it was mainly Rick Smith who was behind the two original songs from the night, except for some polishing and signing off on the lyrics to Caliban's Dream by Karl. However, I can't find any hints as to who might be whistling on And I Will Kiss and Caliban's Dream.

I would be chuffed to bits if it was Karl. It was definitely one of the most memorable and enchanting parts from the whole evening. It's still stuck in my head all these months later.

Has anyone come across any clues to this mystery?

[TheBang]

No idea.

Based on what I've read though, I think Karl didn't just "polish" the lyrics; rather, he was primarily responsible for the lyrics, with direction from Danny Boyle as to their tone and inspiration.

[Spoomy]

My mistake. Yes, it does look like Karl was heavily involved in the lyrics.

Smith told how the brief for the piece was given: "Frank [(Cottrell-Boyce), the opening ceremony's writer] and Danny [(Boyle), its creative director] put forward beautiful, transcendental poems by people like WH Auden, Thomas Nash, Philip Larkin. They set the tone for Caliban's Dream. Very early on Danny encouraged me not to think in terms of "Eye of the Tiger" for the final stages; we weren't looking for anything testosterone-fuelled. Those poetic ideas that we had talked about initially just seemed so beautiful; we wanted to draw them in to the story of the torch. Karl [(Hyde), Smith's partner in Underworld] spent a long time working with those words to make them flow, helping avoid all the possible cliches we could fall prey to."[2]

[Spoomy]

Am I the only one interested in this?

[kontakt1968]

Its Rick whistling apparently its from the original demos and they kept it.Full 7 page article that is very interesting in decembers sound on sound magazine

[Spoomy]

Originally Posted by kontakt1968

Its Rick whistling apparently its from the original demos and they kept it.Full 7 page article that is very interesting in decembers sound on sound magazine

Wow! Thank you!! Indeed the article is very interesting.

I found it here BTW:
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/dec1...es/it-1212.htm
(although you have to be a subscriber to read it or pay 0.99 GBP/USD $1.49 to download a PDF of the article. Caution: they have a terribly unfriendly checkout process)