You Can Have Your Ashes Pressed Into Vinyl

Deciding how your body will live on after you’re gone is a big decision with an increasing number of possibilities. One such route involves sending your remains onto an analog music format: the vinyl record.

And Vinyly is a UK-based service founded in 2009 by a man named Jason Leach. "I didn’t expect much from it," Leach told Bloomberg in 2012. "It was just for fun." But word soon spread and business boomed, suggesting a major untapped market in people who aren’t content with standard afterlife traditions.

While an eternity on vinyl might be less expensive than a funeral, it still isn’t cheap: the "Basic Package" is £3000 (about $4000) and gets you 30 copies of the memorial record, each of which contains some of the provided ashes. The audio itself can be anything—from beloved ballads to a spoken track to birds singing to pure silence (if you’re a John Cage type), or you can hire musicians through the company who will write and record a track, or series of tracks, for you. Each one costs £500 (about $650), and you’ll need more than a quick tune to fill the 24 minutes each record allows (12 minutes per side).

Other upgrades include cover art in the form of a portrait done by National Portrait Gallery artist James Hague, which runs for £3500 (about $4600). And Vinyly also does “FUNerals” for £10,000 (about $13,150) and accepts pet ashes if your darling pooch was an avid music fan. You can also have your—or your dearly departed's—album distributed to "reputable vinyl stores worldwide" if part of the preferred legacy means traveling the world and maybe going home with some strangers.

Visit the And Vinyly site for more information and be prepared for a cheeky dose of gallows humor à la this delightful pun: "Live on from beyond the groove!" For something a bit more heartfelt, a recent—and quite lovely—short film called Hearing Madge chronicles one customer’s experience with making an And Vinyly record for his deceased mother, and includes Leach himself speaking about the company, the process, and his own inevitable aural remembrance. The trailer is below.

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