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.


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Comments (14)
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  • Petteri says:

    No I don’t. Obvi­ous­ly it should be “vinyl­ly”. It’s not “finaly” either…

  • TMOverbeck says:

    What if you record a cov­er of a copy­right­ed song? I’d prob­a­bly do “Try Not To Breathe” by R.E.M. or “Black Parade” by My Chem­i­cal Romance.

  • Paul says:

    Amaz­ing idea to do this. Would have cho­sen the same song. “Wel­come to the black parade” by My Chem­i­cal Romance.

  • Shiann M Skidmore says:

    I was won­der­ing how I would apply for mak­ing a record for my grand­ma who had passed away using her ash­es if there is a way you could email me and give me a link so I could do it

  • Purple Silver says:

    I want “My Death” by David Bowie ⚡🎶🎼💿🎼

  • Susan Millis says:

    After view­ing the video, I would have liked to hear and see some of the end piece at the begin­ning. It’s so drawn out to get to the point. Love the idea, but think you may lose some peo­ple before they final­ly get to the end. I think if you put a snip­pet of the end right after the “ash­es in the eye” com­ment, and then go into the drawn out sto­ry, that it would be more entic­ing, just say­ing. 😊 Fan­tas­tic idea!

  • Markle says:

    If the per­son whose ash­es are being used had record­ed songs pri­or to their demise, and owned the copy­right to said songs, would putting those tracks on the record be allowed by the com­pa­ny?

  • Diane. Hodges says:

    My Late Hus­band Michael passed away 7.years ago & I was going to dis­pose of his ash­es else where until I saw this , I would Love to The Record to by ” Com­fort­ably Numb” By Pink Floyd

  • Tandra says:

    I love Music. This is awe­some what you come up with. And i would love to do this. You are real­ly some­thing. Thanks

  • Jason says:

    Hi Shi­ann,
    You can email us through the web­site and we will help you achieve this.
    By the way all, there are some fac­tu­al errors in the fea­ture. We can achieve more than is sug­gest­ed.
    Apolo­gies for the delay in respond­ing but we have only just been made aware of this link.
    All the best
    R.I.V
    .……And Viny­ly

  • anon says:

    Side One: “Don’t Fear The Reaper” on repeat
    Side Two: Grate­ful Dead select­ed hits

  • RickRolled says:

    I’m gonna rick the heck roll out of my fam­i­ly.

  • bobposkillet says:

    So you could tech­ni­cal­ly turn your ash­es into an audio record­ing of your own sex tape?

  • Andrea Anderson says:

    Hel­lo,
    This is A Fan­tas­tic idea👌🏼
    My won­der­ful hus­band passed away unex­pect­ed­ly a lit­tle over two years ago and I have his ash­es and feel like I need to do some­thing Super Spe­cial with them and would love to get 4 records made for his chil­dren.
    They all have play­ers. My hus­band, Ruben just turned 70 on Feb­ru­ary 4th🙏🏼🕯️And LOVED The Bea­t­les 💚

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