Alot of great recordings that may not technically be live (not recorded in front of an audience?), have been recorded in one take, using a simple miking approach w/ no overdubbing or steroidal treatments. Discs like Peter Epstein/Old School, Joey Baron/Crackshot, Ellery Eskelin/One Great Day or Pierre Favre/Portrait might fit this description and they all feel like excellent live recordings. Here are some others that are in a more strict sense live recordings:
Lucas Niggli/Big Zoom-percussion,clarinet,trombone,upright bass
Ponga/Ponga- two (pretty inventive + mind altering) keyboards, percussion, and equally mind altering sax (from Skerik)
Harriet Tubman/Prototype- guitar, drums, bass (big jazz brained power trio that knows how to use nuance and texture)
Mark Helias/Fictionary- upright bass, t.sax, violin and drums (sounds like there has to be more than 4 guys on this one)
DKV Trio/Live in Wels & Chicago- reeds, upright bass and drums (not a bad place to start w/ Ken Vandermark)
Bluiett Baritone Nation/Libation For The Baritone Saxophone Nation- (huge grunting and resonating) baritone saxes and drums
Jean Derome/Torticolis- wide variety of woodwinds, e. bass, keyboards, daxophone, e. guitar, trombone and brilliantly depraved percussion
Gebhard Ullmann/Ta Lam Zehn- 9 woodwinds and (very subtle and texturally rich) accordion.
Philip Catherine Quartet/Live- e.guitar, keyboards, upright bass, drums
Ed Thigpen/It's Entertainment- drums, piano and upright bass
John Stetch/Green Grove- Another excellent piano/bass/drums trio disc that's very pleasant and not at all cliched or stagnant.
Rich Halley/Live At Beanbenders- alto, tenor, baritone sax, trombone, trumpet, cornet, bass, percussion (may be a little outside for some, but the playing and the recording quality is superb).
Tony Oxley/Floating Phantoms-percussion,violin, electronics, piano and sampling. This one is pretty out there too, but sonically a real stunner that gets better after a few listens. (listener break in)
Massacre/Live at Meltdown- Guitar, bass and drums (very carefully put together stuff, each member is a master at pushing boundries and finding interesting sounds, an amazingly controlled and detailed piece of work).
Other high quality recordings and performances like the Lounge Lizards discs in Berlin, the Charlie Haden Montreal tapes, and some of the Victoriaville festival recordings also have alot to offer.
