** Banyan

ANYTIME AT ALL

(CyberOctave)

Like all stoner music, from Hendrix to We, Banyan's expansive trip-funk celebrates the notion that you can span the universe without leaving the couch. And their Banyan debut, an homage to Stravinsky's Le sacre du printemps that clattered like a Can cover band rehearsing in a parking garage, sounded as prog as two ex-punks (Porno for Pyros' Steven Perkins, Mike Watt), a jazz cat (Nels Cline), and a Beastie Boy buddy ("Money" Mark Nishita) could conceivably get.

But on Anytime, mainstay Perkins picks up some new players -- rapper Bad Azz, fusion bassist Rob Wasserman, and an army of session dudes -- and the trip goes bad. Despite Watt and Cline cameos, this session belongs to the "pros," who sharpen the old Banyan's go-nowhere jams into go-nowhere songs full of unforgivably cheesy "programming" and lifelessly ornate funk-clinic solos. It's as if they'd torn down the Court of the Crimson King and put up a Guitar Center. Pluses: the beatnik kicks of "Keep the Change," the smeared jazz of Cline's "New Old Hat," and the way enigmatic guitarist Buckethead, who represented himself on his 1998 solo album Colma like the bastard son of Eddie Hazel and Joe Satriani, puts melting-osmium soul into "Early Bird" and "Sputnik." Biggest minus: interminable drum-circle exercises like the rotten "The Apple and the Seed," which staggers around for 14 minutes looking for an idea, then drops like a lead hacky-sack.

-- Alex Pappademas

(Banyan perform this Monday, April 12, at Johnny D's. Call 776-2004.)