When it comes to extracurricular activities, many things come to mind. Some see clubs as an opportunity to grow their professional network, their personal connections or as a way to allocate time in their busy day to sit down and indulge in something they enjoy.
Drainers at UCI, sometimes referred to as Irvine Drainers, was established in 2021 with the help of spring 2025 graduate Daniel Gonzales. Gonzales has been a member of the student-run Drainers club since its inception, and served as its president from 2024 to 2025.
“Drainers” are fans of the artist collective Drain Gang — a Swedish hip-hop group established in 2013. The group currently consists of members Bladee, Ecco2k, Thaiboy Digital and Whitearmor.
The term underground rap — or underground hip-hop — refers to artists or musicians who stray from what is typically considered mainstream. There is no definitive sound of underground artists, but many follow similar conventions of emotional lyricism, heavy distortion and electronic mixing that is not typically used by conventional rap or hip-hop artists.
“What I’ll do is, I’ll advertise it as like, kind of more of like a subculture music club, just to get more people like, I guess, engaged with it,” Gonzales told New University.
Although officially called Drainers at UCI, Gonzales emphasized that the club is open to anyone interested in broader music subcultures like underground rap.
“I know there [are] a lot of people who enjoy, like, alternative music that don’t like Drain Gang or even like, know them necessarily,” Gonzales said. “But I know there’s still people that like things that are like adjacent.”
According to the club’s incoming president Ava Tran, Drainers at UCI is a club that accepts anyone, particularly those who don’t feel like they mesh well with the culture of other clubs.
“People aren’t gonna look at you weird because it’s like, if you’re going to this club, you’re just as bad as I am, so it’s like you can’t look at me weird if I do something,” Tran told New University.
Unlike other clubs, Drainers at UCI has a low level of obligation expected from its members, according to Tran, with people welcome to attend as few or as many club events as they want.
The club has grown steadily since its establishment in 2021, growing from 15 members to about 30 to 40 members, according to Gonzales.
Tran explained that the club has also grown in the type of events they are able to put on.
“It used to be a lot smaller, still community, but we kind of kept it more local,” Tran said. “But this year we’ve had some more, I guess, prominent artists kind of show up to these things and started running out venues, I guess, or frat houses and stuff like that.”
Irvine Drainers hosted a celebratory graduation rave for its members, headlined by notable underground DJs Ali RQ and 10cust in June. Shows like this help bring members together, but also present organizational challenges, particularly as the club began working with more notable artists in the underground scene.
Gonzales handled the operational aspects of putting together a show with a multi-artist set list, which meant communicating with several different artists, some busier than others.
“There was definitely a time where I was like, okay, like, is my college career [going to] be categorized by like Drainers at UC Irvine?” Gonzales said. “Like, when I look back at like these four years, like, is that what I want it to be?”
Gonzales shared that, although he tried joining other clubs during his academic career, it felt difficult to form genuine connections or have conversations that weren’t just about academic or professional career development.
Gonzales’ sentiment is one that seems to permeate the fabric of Drainers at UCI, a club that is intent on uniting those on the fringes of UCI’s club culture.
Cain Carbajal is a Features Intern for the summer 2025 quarter. He can be reached at cainac@uci.edu.
Edited by Peyton Arthur, Annabelle Aguirre