Ayuyu Cave, the new record by New York-based artist, educator, and designer Crystal Peñalosa, is a darkly alluring meditation on identity, family, and history, rendered through a blend of high-level sound design and snippets of dialogue. The fifth recorded work in Peñalosa’s oeuvre, Ayuyu Cave marks a continued exploration of her Chamoru heritage — the Indigenous culture of the Mariana Islands and Guam — while leaving space for critical reflections on (de)colonization.  

The five tracks that comprise Ayuyu Cave dream of a future that transcends Western concepts of the individual versus the collective as means of liberation. By stepping outside of these dichotomies, the work embraces the entwined narratives of transness and queerness — at once self-transformative and self-realizing — while raising the question of how to reclaim one’s past without fetishizing it. In doing so, Peñalosa’s work connects to artists such as Chuquimamani-Condori, who reconfigure past, future, individuality, and collectivity towards a better present for us all.  

But the music itself is quite different from the latter’s sample-delic maximalism. Drawing on a diverse yet cohesive soundscape of synthesized tones, Ayuyu Cave is created entirely using Peñalosa’s custom-made sound generators and processors. Shards of conversation emerge in the mix, retracing her matrilineal legacy of caring for the marine land. What might be seen as a mere commitment to DIY ethics instead takes on promethean undertones, folding back into the album’s narrative of self-realization. Raw electricity is fashioned into drums, and cavernous tones take shape through a creative deployment of reverb. 

All of which brings us to the cave. Ayuyu Cave borrows its name from an important cave network in northeast Guam — described in a 2022 hydrological analysis as a site of “inscrutable speleological complexity” whose features “are overprinted such that the sequence, timing, and durations of genetic conditions and associated events cannot be discerned.”¹ Despite never having set foot on Guam, Peñalosa could be said to be “from” there, revealing an existential ambiguity that is mirrored by the cave itself. What is a cave, but a void? It is a negative space, whose very not-ness is a condition of its existence. Ayuyu Cave is full of such reversals — it is ambient music that is full of hard edges; born of synthesizers yet fully organic; clinical and cold in one moment, warm and alive in the next. Thinking through the age-old problem of how to wire the new from the old, the album poses the question — Are we just who we are, or are we defined by where we are from and what we do? To all of the above, it simply answers “yes.”

Crystal Peñalosa is an electronic musician and interdisciplinary designer exploring self-compassion, authenticity, and personal safety. She has released music independently and through Topos Press, and has presented solo and collaborative works at The New School, MoMA PS1, Roulette, Issue Project Room, among others. She serves as a Product Designer with the New Jersey Office of Innovation, teaches Physical Computing at the School of Visual Arts, and volunteers with Voluminous Arts, a transgender liberation project in Queens, New York.

Ayuyu Cave releases on Soap Library on Friday, September 26, 2025 in cassette and digital formats. Each pea-green tape is accompanied by a tablespoon of annatto seeds — a key ingredient in Chamoru red rice. 

¹ Villareal, M.; Jenson, J.; King, R.; and Aban, E. (2022). Hydrogeological characterization of a high-discharge coastal freshwater karst spring system (Publication No. 176). Water and Environmental Research Institute (WERI) of the Western Pacific University of Guam.

©2025 Soap Library // www.soaplibrary.net

Crystal Peñalosa — Asking the Aniti for Permission

1. LOUP, Ode to S (x Human Boys synth)
2. Essex Olivares, Office Riddim
3. The Screamers, 122 Hours of Fear
4. Jooklo Duo & C Spencer Yeh, Set the Fire
5. Harry Partch, Yankee Doodle Fantasy 
6. Eve Essex
7. Dan Fox, Moonlighting
8. Goblin, Oblio
9. Eve Essex & Dan Fox
10. Akio Suzuki, K7
11. Eve Essex
12. Conrad Schnitzler, Coto
13. Aby Ngana, Diop
14. The Homosexuals, Mecho Madness
15. Eve Essex
16. Blue Gene Tyranny, Leading a Double Life

Listening Room Mix for ALLGOLD/PS1 Printshop

New Stuff

Moon (Sketches)

Beyond Thyme 
12.28.2016 @ Sobway Atlanta, GA
holiday special

Astrodesic Online

The next release on Good Morning comes from Matt Werth, both label owner & operator of RVNG Intl, plus also its holy communal space, 'Commend' in New York.

If there's one person who embodies the true spirit of what Good Morning is celebrating & researching, it's Matt.....
And its an absolute honour to welcome such a beautiful being to the Good Morning circle.

Presented here is an hour long mix pieced together with warm hands in a cold winter basement. 

Imagine icy frost on a cold window pane, as you sit gazing outside.... though glowing on the inside with warmth & love.

Or put simply....
'Knowing only that the invisible force
Of which our bodies are the fragmentary rainbow reflection'

Available for pre-order now via the Good Morning bandcamp store, with tapes being distributed in Mid March.

GMT08 Matt W (RVNG) - Harmonics on the Window Pane (snippets)

Sunrise on an Ice Moon by Roscoe Mitchell
Premiered at Roulette Intermedium June 5, 2018
Performed by Anna Wray

Resist and Improvise

Sunrise on an Ice Moon by Roscoe Mitchell

Soap Library is a holistic cassette tape label in New York City.

Crystal Peñalosa — Asking the Aniti for Permission

Soap Library

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