A limited, vinyl-only release (each containing a different baseball card from the 1972-1974 era), Famine of the Soul is a ready-made psych oddity destined to join the ranks of such mythologized artists as Maitreya Kali and Skip Spence. 
Like a Nam vet street-preacher having an acid flashback, the Baseball Astrologer's debut, Famine of the Soul, despite its outward absurdity (or maybe because of it), resists easy dismissal. Using baseball as a kind of metaphor for innocence lost, Douglas Berman (aka the Baseball Astrologer) delivers deadpan, apocalyptic, spoken-word mantras, laying bare (among other subjects) the horrors of Hiroshima and the contradictions within the human soul on songs like "Shadows of Fire" and "Deception of Doing Anything at All." Steven Wray Lobdell (of the Davis Radford Trio and latter-day Faust) adds Eastern-inspired guitar tonalities, drones, and sparse percussion to Berman's hallucinatory visions, making for a simultaneously creepy and relaxing listen (All Music Guide)