Info about song
Steven Wilson said of "Even Less": "That track originally was seventeen minutes long and was recorded as a seventeen minute long track, and it had everything on it. Just ridiculous amounts of overdubs on that track." The song was first released as a one-track promo tape delivered to record stores in order to promote the album. The promotional cassette came in a plain white sleeve with the words "Who Is This?" written in ink and a number 1 in the top right hand corner. Eventually, Wilson only used the first half of the song on the album. The second part of the song was added as a bonus track on the CD single of "Stranger by the Minute", and the full-length version can be found on the Recordings album, the Stupid Dream 2006 DVD-A reissue (in 5.1 Surround Sound) and the 2LP reissue. The demo version of the song could only be found in the special edition of the "Four Chords That Made a Million" single and was around 15 minutes long with quite different lyrics. At the end of the track a woman can be heard repeating the pattern of numbers: "0096 2251 2110 8105". About these numbers, Wilson stated: "The counting in 'Even Less' is taken from a recording of a shortwave numbers station. It is understood that these stations are used by intelligence agencies to transmit coded messages to overseas operatives, although no government agency has ever acknowledged the existence of these stations or what their actual purpose might be. They are virtually impossible to decode without the key since the message and its key are generated at random."[5] Even Less was played live in 1998 as a 15+ minute epic. Later performances were of similar length to the album version. The track has been performed at most Porcupine Tree shows between 1999 and 2005. It also made occasional appearances on the 2007 tour. Live versions can be found on "Warszawa", "XM" and the "Arriving Somewhere" DVD. A version performed by Steven Wilson solo was released on We Lost The Skyline. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.