Review: Coki – Spongebob · Single review ⟋ RA

July 27, 2024July 27, 2024 Vaseline

Emeka Okonkwo reinterprets the divisive track that changed the course of dubstep history.
One morning in 2007, Digital Mystikz member Dean Harris, aka Coki, was casually experimenting with low-frequency oscillators in his South London studio. Inspired by Mr Oizo, he wanted to recreate the French producer’s strange, quivering basslines. After plugging in various modulations, he mapped the LFO to the pitch, fiddled with the filter, and eventually landed on a loop. Over eerie pads, a menacing, razor-sharp bassline began to form. This would become the basis of the dubstep classic “Spongebob.” The masterpiece burst onto the scene with a bouncy, ominous edge, armed with heavy overtones previously unheard of in early dubstep. It stood out immediately. Until then, dubstep tracks had blended 2-step and reggae rhythms into sparse, patient productions. Harris’s focus on the midrange made “Spongebob” one of the first to use the bassline as a main hook—and it exploded. The aggressive bassline could shake the floorboards of any club and inspired a generation of aspiring producers to compete for the dirtiest, most explosive drop. A paradigm shift in electronic music followed, with bolder, jumpier forms of dubstep becoming the mainstay. Harris had kicked down the doors in a way that few, including himself, could have predicted. When I spoke to Harris, he was back in the same studio in south London. Looking back on the early days, he half-joked that he wouldn’t remember anything with all the weed he was smoking. But once he got going, he talked about the making of “Spongebob” with compelling clarity. First, though, we had to address a pressing issue: was there any truth to the internet forum rumors claiming he took a sample Topical SpongeBob’s laugh for the bass line? The reality isn’t far off: “My son inspired the song,” he said with a laugh. “I made it while he was watching Spongeboband I think it came up subconsciously on the track. He looked Spongebob 24/7.”

Mala and Coki at Transmission Leeds.

“Spongebob” sounded like nothing that had come before, and Harris could sense it. The same night he produced the track, he uploaded it to a USB and gave it to visionary South London DJ and tastemaker Hatcha. Shortly after, “Spongebob” began to unravel across the capital, where it was washed by local firework gangs Mala (the other half of Digital Mystikz), Benga and Skream to explosive reactions at DMZ and FWD>>—the legendary London parties considered by many to be the spiritual home of dubstep. Before long, “Spongebob” was being played across the country, changing the chemistry of every dancefloor it was unleashed on. The origins of dubstep can be traced back to Big Apple Records in Croydon, South London, where artists such as Harris, Mala, Kode9, N-Type and Loefah collaborated to experiment with futuristic, bass-boosted sounds following the demise of jungle and drum & bass in the mid-’90s. Dubstep, initially clumsily labeled as “forward music,” was a grittier, rawer take on UK garage, inspired by the rhythmic musicality of dub and reggae. At DMZ, Mala, Loefah and Harris’s main goal was to carve out a space where they could — as the night’s tagline put it — “meditate on bass weight” and showcase sonic experimentation they felt the mainstream wasn’t ready for. “I wanted ‘Spongebob’ to have that drum & bass flair, but still have that dub energy,” Harris said. “It had to be something that no one was doing at the time. That was the DMZ philosophy.” By the time “Spongebob” peaked in 2008, Harris was focused primarily on his family, working as a full-time civil servant while raising his son. He’d taken tentative steps away from the dubstep scene, while his song snowballed into a certified anthem that never left record stores or dance floors. He said friends told him that “Spongebob” was even being played overseas; others wondered why he was still working in an office. But quitting his day job seemed out of the question, given how little money there was to be made in the scene. That was until 2011, the year dubstep exploded, creating a cultural schism perhaps more enduring than any other in modern club music. (Coincidentally, 2011 was also the year that Harris finally quit his day job.) A new generation of dubstep artists began their ascent to global stardom. Producers like Skrillex and Flux Pavillion further amplified the prominent midrange developed in those ill-fated LFO experiments, spawning more hits along the way. Seemingly overnight, this more powerful strain of dubstep — pejoratively called “brostep” for the crowds it attracted — exploded across the U.S. The genre was given a stereotypically American boost, becoming bigger, over-processed, and ultimately exploited for capitalist gain. Across the country, legions of crowd-surfing, head-banging fans began to fill stadiums and festival grounds, crowding out the more indigenous styles that were spilling over into underground clubs. “The media and the public seemed to only watch the loud stuff,” Hatcha once said Fact“They just wanted craziness.” Slowly but surely, these outrageous variations on dubstep became the norm.

Coki at DMZ, July 4, 2009.

The global popularity of the newly commercialized genre led to a drop-obsessed boom that was impossible to sustain. A slew of artists who’d made their names on OG dubstep had crossed over to brostep, and even American mainstream stars wanted in on the action. A$AP Rocky rapped feverishly over Skrillex’s face-melting bassline on “Wild for the Night,” and a tumultuous bridge on Britney Spears’ 2011 track “Hold It Against Me” featured a typical brostep breakdown. The wave of opportunists looking to cash in eventually bled the genre dry. By 2012, the bubble had begun to burst. Overshadowed and confined to a smaller audience of fellow loyalists, the OGs and Puritans were left to sweep the confetti cannon residue from the dance floor. Some camps branded the aforementioned opportunists and promoters as traitors, but Harris, who had seen the rift and its aftermath firsthand, blamed the community’s divisions. “It’s a shame that dubstep couldn’t come together,” he said diplomatically. “We’d be in a better place now. Instead, you have people eating big and people eating small.” During this splintered era, many pointed to “Spongebob.” Baltimore DJ Joe Nice once described the song’s excessive use of wobble as “gimmicky.” It was an easy scapegoat for the partisans. To many, genres like brostep represented the decimation of WHERE dubstep’s reputation. For Harris, however, it was all a silver lining. “Knowing that I took something and it became something I couldn’t have imagined…” he mused. “Even when I go overseas, people say, ‘You don’t understand. I’ve been listening to you since I was 10 years old and now I’m making dubstep.'” He spoke with unwavering admiration for all the success his peers had built thanks to his innovation. “They’re playing in big stadiums, in front of 100,000, 50,000 people,” he added. “It’s also weird because I still haven’t played in front of 50,000 people!” But what ultimately catapulted dubstep to stadium status didn’t come from a divine stroke of genius. The tools to achieve that signature midrange were readily available to any producer curious enough to access. “The midrange thing was intentional,” Harris said. “There was this (Music of the future) magazine with a download code and tutorial for a Reason mastering rack that Mala and I used. It increased the stereo enhancement in your tunes, added more sub and compressed the highs at the same time, so it was never too edgy.”

Coki, left, and Mala, right.

During our interview, it occurred to Harris that he might still be that 17-year-old Music of the future magazine—it could actually be in this studio. After rummaging around in it for a few minutes, he pulled it out and held it up, both of us delighted in the improbability of it all. I quickly scanned the four-step guide to using and installing the rack. The title was: “Silicon Sounds Bass Bins. How to Isolate the Low Frequency.” To some, this magazine page might be considered a cursed artifact. To the rest of us, it’s a keepsake that helped fuel the dubstep scene and expand its reach to a global audience. No matter which side of the fence you’re on, its significance cannot be understated. That said, artists often have a tricky relationship with their discography-defining tracks. Many spend much of their careers trying to distance themselves from their greatest hits, or leaning too heavily on past glories. In Harris’s case, he’s moved on, though not entirely by choice. The original file and pre-master for “Spongebob” went missing a while back, and he admitted he would have remade it ten times if he had been able to keep the audio. While controversial at the time, wobble’s recent underground revival proves that Harris was simply ahead of his time. This current resurgence is palpable in Skream & Benga’s anticipated leap out of retirementwho has a world tour and an official Charli xcx remix. And that’s before we mention Fred again… Flowdan & Skrillex’s seismic “Rumbling“—the GRAMMY Award-winning hit that mutated the DNA of “Spongebob” and blew it to millions. But perhaps most important of all, “Spongebob” still raves, outliving the divisive subgenres for which it’s both reviled and celebrated. No matter where you sit, it’s a crucial piece of electronic music history.

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