Sunday Brunch 12: Guest Host Aaron of Essex with Nat Cole

Guest host Aaron of Essex takes the Sunday Brunch wheel again and welcomes Nat Cole for a lively, music-first conversation about building a “new music economy” on a Bitcoin standard. Nat frames the idea carefully: not just another platform or “ecosystem,” but a permissionless economic layer where artists can participate without gatekeepers, own more of their rails, and connect more directly with listeners.

From there, the episode opens into Nat’s origin story: a childhood split between music and computing, with a Jamaican sound-system lineage on one side, early internet tinkering on the other, and formative years spent around studios, sound engineering, youth projects, pirate-tech curiosity, and anti-establishment energy that made Bitcoin’s freedom ethos click hard once he finally understood it.

A big center of gravity is 2140 Music, Nat’s culture-maxi bridge between legacy music and Bitcoin rails. He describes it as part education hub, part events engine, part curation/bookings layer, built to help artists understand the tools, perform live, and find real opportunities in Bitcoin-adjacent spaces rather than just getting dumped into the deep ocean of Spotify-style discovery. The recurring theme is that the goal is not simply to preach “leave Spotify,” but to help artists add sovereign tools to their stack and gradually own more of their infrastructure.

Along the way, Aaron and Nat spin a five-track set from the 2140 orbit, including music from Air Klipz, Andy Prince, G-O-L-D, Sites, and Acme, using each song as a doorway into the artists, the camp, and the wider mission. One highlight is “Buffalo Gals,” which Nat describes as the unofficial mascot track for 2140 Music, anchored by the refrain that they “came to change the game.”

The closing stretch turns practical and forward-looking: Nat previews Bitcoin Graffiti Jam in Brixton/Stockwell, more intimate education/community events, and a continued push to build new bridges from the fiat music world into an uncapturable network where artists can actually own the relationship with their audience.

Links

• 2140 Art
• Nat on Nostr
• New Music Nudge Unit
• Aaron on Nostr