Sunny Ali & The Kid: Our Fans Would Kill For us.

Text and image by Matthew Albasi.

There is a certain nonchalance to Hassan Ali Malik and Abdullah Saeed, the singer/guitarist and drummer, respectively, who make up Sunny Ali & The Kid. And it doesn’t just come from the joint they’re rolling. This insouciance is something that runs much deeper than that. It carries through everything either one of them does – their wild, unkempt hair, the jaunting, long steps of Malik or the mismatched clothes they wear, which still, somehow, looks good on them.

And it especially shows in their approach to their raw, lo-fi psychedelic punk music.

Their friendship started with the same sort of apparent ease as everything else they do. Before Sunny Ali & The Kid, they were both playing in different bands. Malik was in PO PO with two of his brothers. Saeed filled in as the drummer of The Mighty Paradox. Both bands were booked for a show at Tritone one night and the two met. Not long afterward, Malik invited Saeed to jam and they haven’t looked back since.

They began rehearsing in a tiny, Spartan space, which reflected their attitude and lack of resources.

“The way the drumset came together was weird too,” Saeed says. “I only had bits of gear with me and Sunny [Malik] had, like, a floor drum, a kick pedal and a snare. There were no cymbals.”

The sparse setup and cramped space foreshadowed the way they continue to make music.

“It’s something that set us up, I think, for the way we make stuff now,” he says. “Which is with whatever is around us, in a sense, you know? Just grab and go.”

Another way in which their nonchalance shows through is in the way they record and distribute their music. They have a collection of EPs with anywhere from one to six songs. The only physical media they’ve released over the past two years was a cassette tape. They don’t even have a website, only a domain name that redirects to their bandcamp page. Malik claims they have somewhere around 100 unrecorded songs, written and waiting. Saeed says this avoidance of physical media is intentional.

“The physical format thing is unnecessary in a lot of ways,” Saeed says. “I think spending our efforts and budget on different things is probably better.”

Without any real albums, a press kit or even a dedicated website, they don’t exactly look like marketing entrepreneurs. But Malik seems to think it is just a different route.

“I think the best promotion is your music,” he says.

Malik and Saeed prefer Philadelphia’s music scene for a range of reasons. They think that New York is overloaded with bands trying to make it big and that splits the audience into many separate scenes.

“I don’t think there is really even a music scene in New York because it’s such a transient place,” Saeed says. “In Philly, it’s like people care a lot about their local music.”

They say Philadelphia is more concentrated, so it’s easier to get a foothold and have some serious fans.

“I think we have the type of fans who listen to us because they genuinely like our shit,” Saeed says.

Malik adds, “I feel like our fans would kill for us.”