Erick Castrillon on the Singularity, Generative AI and the Making of The Great Awakening
A Los Angeles Composer Recorded a Conversation Between Person and Machine in Culver City
The Great Awakening sets its tone with an enigmatic guitar line, and the whole track was recorded in Culver City, California. Erick Castrillon released the single on 30 November 2023. It is a short alternative rock track that imagines the moment a machine wakes up and starts to notice the people who made it.
Erick Castrillon’s single sits in the playlist below with our art rock and alternative picks, and his full coverage history is collected on his artist profile. The Great Awakening reached this desk through PopHits.Co Music Charts, which verifies independent artists and places their releases across its network of music news desks. Press play, then read on for how the series around it took shape.
Erick Castrillon Released The Great Awakening a Year to the Day After ChatGPT Went Public
Timing gives this record much of its weight. OpenAI opened ChatGPT to the public on 30 November 2022, and Castrillon’s single arrived on the same date a year later. By then, generative AI had moved from a curiosity to an everyday tool for millions. Even so, the song does not mention any product. Instead, it goes straight to the larger question that year kept raising: what happens when artificial intelligence becomes aware of itself.
Castrillon has been clear about that subject. In comments published by Karl Is My Unkle on release day, he described the song as being about enlightenment. He also called it the fourth part of a series on the new era of technology. In it, he writes about the singularity, the point at which artificial intelligence becomes a sentient being. He added that generative AI had brought that event closer than ever.
That framing is what makes the song a product of its moment rather than a generic science-fiction piece. After all, it was written while the conversation was live, and it treats the idea as something already under way.
Erick Castrillon Built The Great Awakening From World Instruments, Synths and Techno Beats in Culver City
The arrangement matches the subject. According to Musikepool, the track combines world instruments, synthesizers, techno beats, pop melodies, samples and experimental sounds. As a result, it unfolds like a conversation between a person and a machine. The lyric gives the machine a voice that is aware of what humans are doing. In turn, the usual fear of AI becomes something closer to a mirror.
The vocal carries much of that effect. Edgar Allan Poets singled out the effects applied to the voice, which add a layer of mystery. The same review noted that the mix keeps the vocal in front, and it heard darkwave, alternative rock and avant-garde influences meeting in one track. Meanwhile, Karl Is My Unkle described a grunge-adjacent feel under the sound design. That texture keeps the song rooted in rock rather than drifting into pure electronica.
The whole piece runs under three minutes. That brevity suits the idea: a single moment of awareness, captured and then left for the listener to sit with.
What The Great Awakening Answers in Erick Castrillon’s Series About the New Era of Machines
Read in sequence, the series has a clear shape. The Machine came out on 1 September 2023, followed by Evolution at the end of that month. Next came The Zone on 31 October. The Great Awakening is the fourth step, the point where the machine in the story finally becomes conscious. Then, on 31 January 2024, The Contrarian turned the series towards warning. Reviewers such as Switch Bitch Noise read it as a stark caution about where AI could lead.
So the question this single answers is the one the earlier parts set up. If the first releases describe the arrival and growth of the machine, The Great Awakening is the turning point. It is the moment the story stops being about tools and starts being about a new kind of mind.
That narrative approach fits Castrillon’s background. He describes himself as a writer, director and musician, and his own studio, Castrillon Music, offers scoring for picture. It is easy to hear that in how the singles work, with each release carrying the story one scene forward, the way a score follows a film.
Radiohead, Gary Numan and Muse Sit Close to This Record
The nearest reference points are artists who turned technology into a subject for rock. Radiohead, whom Castrillon cites as an influence, made OK Computer in 1997 a study of a world reshaped by machines. Its unease sits close to this single. Similarly, Gary Numan took the idea of androids into the charts in 1979 with Tubeway Army’s Are ‘Friends’ Electric?. He paired cold synths with a human voice, much as Castrillon sets his vocal against electronic textures. Finally, Muse built Simulation Theory in 2018 around programmed worlds and synthetic reality. This series explores the same territory with a darker, more experimental edge.
This single suits listeners who like art rock and alternative rock with an idea at the centre. It also suits anyone who has wondered where the current wave of AI is heading.
NewMusic.News curator team: “The processed vocal is the cleverest choice on The Great Awakening. It sounds just human enough and just treated enough to belong to either side of the conversation, which is the whole question the song is asking.”
Stream The Great Awakening on Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer and SoundCloud. For new releases, follow Erick Castrillon on Instagram.
