Cape Town’s Green Point stadium has finally landed, in sight that is, and what an incandescent vision of absolution it is to my physically inept body; the payback from a near-3km fan-walk and too many pre-concert doubles. It’s the 5th of October and Coldplay is about to light up the night…

The bourgeois are separated from the proletariat into queues of general seating and golden circle ticket-holders which are practically indistinguishable to me as I stare back at the scores of salivating fans, stretching back to what seems like the stone-age. To my disbelief we are soon braceleted up, our tickets torn at super-speed and stand awed and insignificant on the stairs leading into the centre of this gargantuan stadium, glazed by the spectacle of this spaceship and struggling to process the sight of it as a sensible whole, made up of multitudes of diminutive, ecstatic beings, all wildly communicating, gasping, twitching and entirely unnerved with anticipation.

The stage is set, lit-up, vacillating with prolific colour and the sheer electricity of the band’s cloaked presence, thickening the atmosphere, leaving every breathless soul suspended in time. With violent impact, they blaze into sight and sound, producing the music which has compelled a horde of some 50,000 to their Cape Town jaunt. Though their latest album, Mylo Xyloto is only set to be released in late October, an opening song from this coveted compilation is soaked up thirstily, as the hysteria sets in and a two-hour Coldplay orgy, superimposed with balloons, confetti and fireworks, commences.

Possessing seven Grammys, four MTV awards and six Brit awards under their significantly studded belt, as well as having sold 50 billion records worldwide, ego is gapingly absent in the demeanour of gentle pom, Chris Martin, lead vocalist, guitarist, keyboarder and often composer and lyricist for the band, who, with a single softly expressed request, has the stars of our lit-up cellphones surging, undulating, fiercely and affectively through the darkened but devoted crowd who sparkle for these interstellar deities, Coldplay, a philosophy, a universal clique.

Martin is vigorous on stage, rocking and sweating his soul out for his intensely fixated fans, that is, when he is not manipulating the keys of his fittingly, aesthetically eccentric piano through the devastating power imbued in the fingertips of this surreal, creative savant. Ground-breaking songs like ‘Yellow’, ‘Fix You’ and ‘Viva la Vida’ word-for-word as if they were the sacred mantra of the thoroughly taken masses.

This band are not only an assembly of musicians, they have and intensively secured the title of being incontestable artists, fearless masters of their craft. With pristine, technical intellect and expression that twists, contorts progresses but is self-controlled, never failing to inspire, move or relate to their listeners, an infinite appeal.

Coldplay – Paradise

Coldplay – Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall

New singles like ‘Paradise’ and ‘Every Teardrop is a Waterfall’ affect to the striking degree as all those before them, taken to naturally and instinctively by the devout droves. One’s cells practically tingle with the emotionality of the music itself and Martin’s searing, melodic vocal portrayal of melancholy and affection is consistently tasteful and understated so as to vehemently pierce with its unadulterated authenticity. As the show ends and the crowd parts, the fever and the emotion subsist as I am well aware, though thrown and dazed as I am, that I have not seen nor heard the last of these timeless virtuosos.