So I pretty much fell for that free gym trial hook, line and sinker. Within 5 minutes of entering the gym, I was in the office handing over my credit card making me possibly the only person in the world who goes in for a free trial and ends up not even getting the free trial but signing a year contract! At least I got a good deal anyway.

I’ve been out of the whole voluntary exercise spiel for quite some time and I knew that I’d take to it like a cat to a freezing pond. I brought my MP3 player with me to help get me through it but I soon learned that the type of music that I walk down the street with isn’t exactly ideal for a stint on the treadmill. I found myself just closing my eyes and running to the beats of the music… and almost being flung off the end of the treadmill. I now understood why gyms always play an endless bombardment of “UNTZ UNTZ UNTZ” over the stereo systems – insurance reasons. People would be flying off treadmills left, right and centre should they dare to play anything decent!

This poses a problem for me as I go to the gym to exercise and not to have blood slowly trickle from my ears thanks to being exposed to such drivel. So I’m on the look out for an alternative work out playlist which would ideally encompass some rock and electro and result in me not having to worry about being flung across the room. A quick Google revealed a few suggested playlists but they didn’t really appeal to me so I went trawling through my music collection to see if I could find anything that would be of interest.

A few months a go, I started to hear good things about an artist going by the name of “Girl Talk” whose made a name for himself for having a knack for fusing together the latest chart hits with timeless power ballads of yesteryear and topping them off with hip-hop beats. You can say what you want about people who “mashup” songs, but there’s no arguing that Girl Talk’s end product is extremely fun to listen to! It should see me through a few miles anyway.

Of course, once I figured that I was craving an eclectic mix of rock and electro, 2 Many DJ’s / Soulwax immediately sprung to mind. As well as consistently knocking out top-class remix after top-class remix of some of the best songs released on the alternative scene over the years, they’re also infamous for their “As Heard on Radio Soulwax” series which were sets of (usually) alternative songs that were transformed thanks to the magic Soulwax touch. With 2 Many DJ’s, you can expect great songs to somehow be made better and you’ll find yourself growing fond of songs that you weren’t too keen on to start with! Admittedly, some of their sets sound as if they don’t really have their shit together, but most of them sound as if they were hand-picked for me!

There is absolutely tonnes of material from both of those artists available free online (as in legally). I’d advise you to seek them out if you’re growing tired of the music typically found in gyms! Hopefully I won’t have any carpet burn to report!