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With the release of its second album, "Megaphobe," on October 26, Quebec City rock act Projet Orange will be working two simultaneous careers, building on the fanbase it built with its 2001 francophone debut, and introducing itself to a whole new English-language market.
The new album on ViK./BMG Canada features 10 English-language songs and four French. The track "Les Géants" was serviced to francophone rock and top 40 stations in Quebec to satiate Projet Orange's existing fans, and is currently top 20. The band's first English single, "Tell All Your Friends," was serviced to rock and campus stations in late July and more recently to Hot AC. It entered the top 50 at rock radio last week.
"This (band) is an unknown commodity anywhere west of Quebec so we're starting anew," says Toronto's Warren Copnick, director, national promotion at BMG Canada, who is working radio outside Quebec. The company's Montreal promo rep Stephane Drolet is working the English and French single in La Belle Province.
"In Quebec, they are pretty decently known and everywhere else this is a brand new group, so we've gone in knowing that it's going to be more of a marathon than a sprint, with a lot of competition out there with Canadian acts," says Copnick. "The reaction has been very positive."
Within two weeks of servicing, Toronto's CFNY added the track. Since then, London, Ont.'s CFPL, Kingston's CIKR, Montreal's CHOM, and even CHOI in Quebec City, a francophone rock station, have come on board. Among the recent adds are West Coast stations, Vancouver's CFOX, Victoria's The Zone, and Winnipeg's CHIQ and CKMM.
In talking with programmers at English radio, Copnick lets them know Projet Orange's story in Quebec. The band's self-titled debut sold 14,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan Canada, 13,000 from Quebec. At francophone radio, the band had four charting singles -- "De Heros a Zero" (No. 1), "S'etend l'Amer" (No. 3), "Mystere Aerosol" (No. 5), and "La Pomme" (No. 15) -- and the video for "La Pomme" won best French video at the 2001 MuchMusic Video Awards. But these stats aren't the major selling point, says Copnick -- the album is.
"It's an interesting discussion, but it really has absolutely no bearing on whether they took to this record. They're taking this record at face value, which is what I really want," says Copnick.
"The record's pretty different from a lot of other stuff that's sitting on their desk, especially the single. It walks a unique line, not really heavy power pop punk, like a Sum 41 or a Gob or a Simple Plan, yet it's not really an over-the-top rock band like Nickelback or The Hip. It sort of takes a lot of the best of a lot of things and binds it into one.
"So it's a unique sound. You've got Gavin Brown's production, which is terrific, but then you've got these really cool European influenced vocals. Our pitch is this will fit every radio station, whether it's an alternative radio station or whether it's an upper demo rock station. Sonically, it's a great fit and it's a great sounding record."
To help "brand" Projet Orange, ViK. has been slowly seeping out a very grassroots street marketing campaign, utilizing a caricature named Arthur, a skinny suit with a monstrous cocked head, giant eyes and gaping mouth, and bald bristly head. A "real-life" version appears in the video for "Tell All Your Friends" (yes, the guy shaved his head for the role), which is in heavy adds at both MuchMusic and MusiquePlus.
In the initial set up, Arthur appeared on a first-run of 15,000 round orange stickers with no other information. A second run of 10,000 included the band name and web address (www.projetorange.com). The character also appears on street poster-boards, which were mailed to rock stations nationwide. "I don't care if they don't hang it. They just continue to be exposed," says Copnick. A French version went out in Quebec.
Arthur has been implemented in most of the marketing and advertising, including temporary tattoos that were handed out at summer festivals and a truck in Montreal covered entirely in Projet Orange vinyl wrap.
In addition to the caricature campaign, 4-track samplers were manufactured for various sectors of the industry, and "Tell All Your Friends" appeared Vice magazine's August CD Sampler and "Hell To Pay" will be on Vice's October one.
"I have switched into full swing with album graphics and album artwork as I am moving into phase two of my plan pre-street date," says BMG's manager, artist marketing Dean Pogue. "Our efforts are largely with radio and video."
Signed in 1998 to the French division of BMG Canada in Quebec by Anne Vivien (who has since left the company), at the core of Projet Orange are brothers Jean-Christophe Boies (lead vocals, guitar) and Jean-Sebastien Boies (guitar, backing vocals, keyboards). The songwriting team planned on making another French album and had more than two-dozen new songs ready to go when Jean-Sebastien was diagnosed with a blood poisoning disease in February of 2002.
For the next six months, he underwent extensive treatment. Once back to good health, the brothers started writing some songs in English, which the band's manager, Sebastien Nasra of Avalanche Productions, sent off for linguistic assistance to Toronto singer-songwriter Simon Wilcox, who is bilingual. She had worked with another one of Nasra's artists, Jorane, and had recent success as co-writer on Three Days Grace's "Home."
It was never the band's intention to make an all-English album. "I don't think it would be a smart thing to do," says Nasra, who managed Soul Attorneys 12 years ago and then One Ton (both acts are now defunct).
"The band primarily writes in French and then when a couple of English tunes came out naturally, we decided to open it up and, suddenly, everybody started buzzing. (The label) people in Toronto thought, 'My God, this is really hot stuff, and it's cool that it's a band that we've already signed,' but in a way it's almost like a new signing for them.
"Most of the record was done when Anne left six to eight months ago, and they didn't replace her in Montreal, but I'm used to dealing with the Toronto guys and the album was becoming more like a national project for them in English. So basically A&R is in Toronto, but I'm kind of doing local A&R for the market here, for the specific things that we might need, like a radio version or edit of one song.
"They know that I know the market here and I can do that. It's really great because it gives me a lot of leeway to really manage the project, not just in a purely artist management thing but more like product management."
Eric Filto and Projet Orange co-produced the majority of the record and Juno Award-winning Brown (Three Days Grace, Billy Talent, Thornley) produced two songs, the single, and "Hell to Pay." Only one of the 14 songs appears in both languages and that is the title track.
ViK./BMG Canada's director of international, Ivan Berry, and artist development coordinator/A&R international coordinator Adam Fujiki, don't speak French and took "more of a backseat" on A&R-ing those songs, but as Fujiki notes, "You take a different look at the song. You don't know word for word what they are singing, but there's so much feeling and so much melody there."
Says Berry: "We have a close relationship with the band and we both don't speak French, but we co-A&R-ed this project with the band, with the band's manager and in conjunction with our Quebec office. So we get feedback from everybody from a lyrical content point of view and musical content. As far as I see it, it's is all in English (laughs). It's just music and there's no language attached to music."
The Toronto headquarters has some experience now working a Quebec artist to English Canada. Audrey's debut was mainly French with three English tracks and the next Andree Watters will have English songs. "We definitely have a much better understanding of the culture," says Berry.
Projet Orange's first album, while French, was never released in France, but "De Heros a Zero" was used in Belgium for the Automobile Insurance Board's campaign against fast racing, after a teen was killed in a small village. Part of Berry's job as director of international is to secure other territories for BMG Canada signings.
He plans on taking the album to BMG affiliates in France, Germany, the U.K., Japan, and Australia, and "other non-French speaking countries that have a proven track record of breaking English rock band," says Berry. "This album lends itself to a global marketplace. It's a pop/rock record."
Nasra, whose company continues to book Projet Orange in Quebec, has hooked up with Steve Butler at Toronto's S.L. Feldman & Associares as the national booker for English Canada. "The plan was to have them charting in both English and French Canada and then to look for the touring initiatives for the fall," says Butler.
This month, the band played five campus shows in Southern Ontario and the East Coast with the Salads. The band will play a private show in Toronto Oct. 26 for Toronto's Edge 102 and more radio promo shows are planned all over southern Ontario in late October. Quebec dates will follow with an as yet unnamed "major Canadian act" for early November.
"In Quebec, they can play some English and outside of Quebec, they'll do a couple of tunes in French," says Nasra.