He has played percussion for jazz and salsa legends Jack Dejohnette and Eddie Palmieri, but Luisito Quintero is also loved by house music crowds for his work on Elements of Life, the acclaimed 2005 project helmed by Louie Vega of producers Masters at Work. Caracas-born Quintero brought organic, earthy flavours to artfully embroidered beats that were more ambitious than most click-track fodder. Last year, Vega returned the favour by producing Quintero's Percussion Madness, an effervescent debut that eluded most jazz and world-music audiences, though its fiery solos and intricate rhythms would have scored highly with both.

Joined on stage by a guitarist, bassist, two keyboardists and two percussionists, Quintero, playing drums and timbales, brings the album's studio sound to life from the outset. As the set unfolds, stark African rhythms connect the dots between bossa, funk and mambo. And when the bass-drum patterns reach their most primeval, Masters at Work's house thump also materialises. The band's lead keyboardist, Rodrigo Gonzalez, works on a laptop. Rousing vocal samples contrast with the band's own singing; pre-recorded horn lines mesh with choppy real-time riffs; liberal shots of sub-bass thicken the ensemble sound.

Yet amid these rich colours, it is Luisito and his cousin, Roberto Quintero, who provide the pyrotechnics. The latter's conga solos dazzle with their tonal crispness and ferocious barrages of triplets, and the former's timbales finale sees him hold a tricky clave pulse with his left hand while unfurling waves of expertly pitched drum rolls with his right. Luisito's timekeeping is superb. Not once does he lose it, and his sophisticated tribal shuffle is grist to Vega's mill of Apple Mac beats.