Fake Tattoos

In 2014, a graphic designer in Bengaluru was making bootleg edits of other people's dance records in his bedroom under the name 5AMP. One of them — a rework of a Tiësto track — got picked up by Tiësto himself and played on the radio and at a festival. Everything since has been built on that single upload. The name arrived later, and by accident: a stranger at Comic Con told him he loved his fake tattoos, and it stuck.

Samprukt Mohanty never trained. No production school, no coaching — by his own account, YouTube and a hundred tracks a day. What he built is a sound of his own: house and melodic techno fused with Indian, Middle Eastern and Sufi melody, most of it constructed around old Indian vocal recordings he digs out and puts back on dancefloors. Two years driving through small-town India became the album Bloom. Rupaiye Wala premiered on BBC radio. Haseen Raatein became the record that changed the price of his name. Four albums deep in a singles-only industry, he keeps making them anyway.

He does it without a label, a manager or a press desk — fourteen countries in 2025, a Bengaluru show he produced and paid for himself, releases he runs end to end. In 2026 he put out 'Sa Re Ga Ma Premium' with Sahil Madaan — a past VIC Fix guest — so he and VIC already share a room before the first question. There's almost no independent writing about him, not because nobody's listening, but because Indian music media has no desk for an underground artist who's bigger abroad than at home. This is VIC handing him the pen.