It's a battlefield, the title of Graham Greene's 1934 Depression-era novel said of life, and faced with Covid-19's new erasure of incomes, albums such as this are ammunition. An EP of lost tracks released on Bandcamp's musician-friendly platform it is, like Jay Phelps' Big Night In online gigs, a way of keeping going. Phelps has been striving with significant success since moving with his family from Vancouver to London aged 17 in 1999, swiftly graduating from Gary Crosby's Jazz Jamaica and Tomorrow's Warriors to form Empirical, and running Ronnie Scott's Late Show sessions for a year. His affinity for the warm openness (though not electric heat) of Louis Armstrong, and bop pioneers from Fats Navarro to Miles Davis, sets him apart from current London scene leaders, Mark Kavuma and youngest lion Xhosa Cole excepted (he played in Cole's band just before the viral axe fell). This short release compiles his virtues, contrasting his trumpet's mellow, heartfelt comfort with his band's nervier work on the ballad ‘Angel’, and perhaps exploring sublimated strains on ‘Tormented’, in which his tentative tendrils cohere into romantic tones, while pianist Rick Simpson too essays delicate introspection. ‘Flash, at over 11 minutes, dominates. Hitching hesitancy and bird-in-cage flutters gain traction and thrust as Simpson again paces round Phelps’ long cries of freedom. Though abbreviated, this release reveals the complexities of a player inclined to the street's sunny side.