Sonic Youth Gossip - Live Youth - How do they pull it off?

So recently I was listening to the soundboard from LA in 1998, and it struck me how smooth the transitions were live. If you factor in the complex arrangements of many songs from A Thousand Leaves and of course, Anagrama, it becomes apparent that pulling such smooth transitions with such different parts of the songs must be a pretty difficult thing to do.

So, how?

In my listening, I've noticed that Steve is usually the big queuer, or Kim, since she plays the most rhythmic parts (at least for this era), but sometimes, there is no Steve intervention, and going back perfectly to a section of the song, among so much noise and feedback must be a terribly daunting task to time and get it so perfectly.

Then there are visual queues, but Sonic Youth doesn't really seem like the band with the biggest eye contact amongst its members.

Finally, I am curious as to how much improvisation goes in into certain songs, like Hits of Sunshine. With such a steady beat with Lee and Thurston playing their parts over it, can we be 100% sure these are improvised? Some noises are really reminiscent of the respective studio versions.

However they do it, it's really fascinating.