This duck-billed doozy finds four generations of horn honkers blowing in from the Windy City to cut a cross-section through its improvised music scene. The two compositions contributed by each band member source heavily from Chicago's past, seguing seamlessly from sultry post-speakeasy snapshots to AACM-furbished flurries. Surprisingly, perhaps, it's the troupe's youngest member, Nick Mazzarella, who casts furthest back, his ‘Remnant’ and ‘Camera Obscura’ adopting Prohibition-era passages, punctuated by lyrical tones reminiscent of Johnny Griffin at his most sentimental. But Western Automatic avoids the lugubriousness of a history school lecture, the quartet's capacity for invention and dynamism pitching pieces decidedly in the now, shaking apart the secret subterranean burrows of their native downtown. Rempis’ storming ‘The Rush’ even surpasses the mighty horn-locking heroics he committed to tape alongside Vandermark on the pugilistic power-housing of 1999's Simpatico (rhythm sections be damned). Educating, innovating, entertaining; The Chicago Reed Quartet have produced an unmitigated masterclass.