Ableton and Battles released a nice video about the process Battles goes through when they’re making a record:

There’s also a nice Q&A blog post that goes into some of the details.

My observations:

• They don’t use a click. Instead, the loops come through an amp behind the drum riser, so they can all hear them. I’ve got to believe they’re in their monitors, too. This can only work with the rhythmic nature of the loops they use; their music is very staccato
• Ian Williams is sampling his guitar into Ableton clips, and then playing those clips from a Push. I need to figure out this workflow…
• They have the same problems I have with an infinite amount of time and making decisions. This time around, Sleep Studies put a lot of the decision-making for drum comping in the hands of another engineer, to get around this issue.