Rather than having your ashes hidden away in a jar in the cupboard, why not have them pressed into the grooves of a vinyl LP? That’s precisely what UK company And Vinyly is offering. Who wouldn’t want a custom vinyl recording of their own voice, their favorite tunes or their last will and testament? I can’t think of anyone. Perhaps my wife wouldn’t.
The company was founded by techno musician Jason Leach, influenced by two events. After his mother was hired by a funeral parlor in England, he viewed an American tv program where someone launched fireworks filled with their beloved’s ashes.
But how to get the ashes in the record? The process involves sprinkling ashes onto the raw piece of vinyl (known as a “biscuit”) before it is pressed by metal plates. The basic package costs £2,000 (today about US $3,100) and includes standard artwork—a black sleeve with the legend, “Rest In Vinyl,” with the deceased’s name and birth-death dates, as in the image above—and up to 30 ash-flecked discs with whatever sounds you choose, lasting a maximum of 24 minutes. Leach’s company offers premium services such as custom sleeve artwork, a portrait painted by UK National Portrait Gallery artist James Hague, using your ashes mixed into the paint, and custom songwriting by Leach himself (called “Bespook Music”).
The hardest part is choosing the audio for your LP. Leach says: “It’s difficult to think of what to put on your record because you want it to be the best album you can imagine.”