You Can Have Your Ashes Turned Into a Playable Vinyl Record, When Your Day Comes

Even in death we are only lim­it­ed by our imag­i­na­tion in how we want to go out. There are now ways to turn our corpse into a tree, or have our ash­es shot into space, or press­ing our ash­es into dia­monds–I believe Super­man is involved in that last one. And now for the music lover, a com­pa­ny called And Viny­ly will press your ash­es into a playable vinyl record.

You like that pun­ny com­pa­ny name? There’s more: the busi­ness lets the dear depart­ed to “Live on from beyond the groove.” Hear that groan? That’s the deceased lit­er­al­ly spin­ning in their grave…on a turntable.

The UK-based com­pa­ny has been around since 2009, when Jason Leach launched it “just for fun” at first. But a lot of peo­ple liked the idea and have kept him in busi­ness.

It will cost, how­ev­er. The basic ser­vice costs around $4,000, which gets you 30 copies of the record, all of which con­tain the ash­es. How­ev­er, you can­not use copy­right-pro­tect­ed music to fill up the 12 min­utes per side, so no “Free Bird” or “We Are the Cham­pi­ons,” unfor­tu­nate­ly. But you can put any­thing else: a voice record­ing, or the sounds of nature, or com­plete silence. For an addi­tion­al fee, you can hire musi­cians through the com­pa­ny to record a track or tracks for you.

Oth­er extras include cov­er art either sup­plied by the deceased or their fam­i­ly or paint­ed by James Hague of the Nation­al Por­trait Gallery in Lon­don and/or street artist Paul Insect; extra copies to be dis­trib­uted world­wide through record shops (has any­one seen one? Let us know.); and a £10,000 “FUNer­al,” where your record will be played at your funer­al, sur­round­ed by loved ones.

Jok­ing aside, the ser­vice can pro­vide com­fort and a mem­o­ry trig­ger for those left behind. The above video, “Hear­ing Madge” is a short doc about a son who took record­ings of his moth­er and used And Viny­ly to make a record out of them. It’s sweet.

“I’m sure a lot of peo­ple think that it’s creepy, a lot of peo­ple think it’s sac­ri­le­gious,” the man says. “But I know my moth­er wouldn’t have. She would’ve thought it was a hoot.”

Jason Leach, a musi­cian and vinyl col­lec­tor him­self, talks of the imme­di­a­cy of sound and what it means to many.

“Sound is vibrat­ing you, the room, and it’s actu­al­ly mov­ing the air around you,” he says. “And that’s what’s so pow­er­ful about hear­ing someone’s voice on a record. They’re actu­al­ly mov­ing the air and for me that’s pow­er­ful.”

via Men­tal Floss/Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Cleese’s Eulo­gy for Gra­ham Chap­man: ‘Good Rid­dance, the Free-Load­ing Bas­tard, I Hope He Fries’

John­ny Depp Reads Let­ters from Hunter S. Thomp­son (NSFW)

Watch Carl Sagan’s “A Glo­ri­ous Dawn” Become the First Vinyl Record Played in Space, Cour­tesy of Jack White

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.