The new Bang & Olufsen shop in Paris, located on the famous Champs-Elysées, has been specially designed by Jean Michel Jarre and Elisabeth Sandager, president of B&O France.

The shop is integrated in the Maison du Danemark, and its surface is quiet small -only 100 m² !!- but is charming and pleasant.

At the entrance, you arrive in the first room, presenting the audiovisual animation created by Jean Michel Jarre. The animation is shown on a total of 10 BeoVision 1 TV-screens, positionned as in Avignon at the Global Tekno 2000 Festival.

The animation itself is a BIG disappointment. After two years of announcements around this project, the only thing visitors of this shop will see and hear is a 29 minute video, which has nothing to do with the previous videos Jean Michel Jarre has made for Métamorphoses or the Athens concerts.

The video shows a mixture of Danish people communicating with each other (each screen shows one person), painting the B&O logo in pink. A fish enters the screen on the top left TV-screen to move to the right TV-screen. The animation is relaxing but sadly enough not quiet passionating as expected.

For the music, it is more a mixture of various sounds on a very calm background of cheap rain sounds. Unlikely to Waiting For Cousteau, the track hardly has any ambiance or structure but pure based of background sounds. The song 'Interior Music - Bonjour-Hello', includes a few samples of some of Jarre's previous songs, as the heartbeat on the beginning of each song at the Okinawa gig, the Ethnicolor scream, Oxygène 12 played on the piano (the only good thing !) and even samples from non-Jarre songs, including organs, guitars, and a sample (or something which sounds very familiar) of Air's Virgin Suicides soundtrack. There is an instrumental version and a version with lyrics, including sentences or words like : "you're gorgeous", "on s'est déjà vu ?", "oh il neige", "your future is now", "tu es beau tu sais", "you look great", "le soleil brille toujours", "restez un peu !", "avez-vous du temps", "have you kissed somebody today ?", "téléphonez-moi", "now is the time".

The next room presents the B&O products and finally the boutique ends in the last room, including a widescreen TV which shows a five minute presentation of the B&O catalogue on excerpts of Oxygene 7, 12 and 13 with some extra sounds effects added (telephone, wind effects).

The Bang & Olufsen boutique is located on the Champs-Elysées 142.