WITH recent editions having featured names as diverse as Midland, Palms Trax, Matrixxman, Xosar, Helena Hauff and The Black Madonna, it’s easy to forget that Bigfoot’s Tea Party was once as firmly tied to a single scene as it’s possible to be.

Beginning eight years ago with what was meant to be a one-off party at the 80-capacity AdLib on Glasgow’s Hope Street (also famously where Numbers started life), Bigfoot’s began during the tail-end of the divisive minimal techno boom of the mid-00s, and was heavily focused on that sound early on.

Though minimal techno, and the early Bigfoot’s parties at the Glasgow School of Art, certainly had their moments, it’s hard to believe that the currently five-strong Bigfoot’s crew would be preparing to throw birthday parties in four different cities and then hold Scotland’s most enticing Hogmanay event if they hadn’t done such a good job of diversifying their offering.

“I’m really chuffed that we’ve managed to get to a place where we’re not associated with any one scene,” co-founder George Patrick says on a call from Berlin, where he has lived for two-and-a-half years.

“To be honest, I was never that into minimal, but [fellow co-founders] Craig Bell and Chris Kelly were quite into it when we started so that’s just the direction it took.

“Craig moved to Melbourne after a couple of years and Chris and I gradually moved Bigfoot’s away from minimal after that. Chris has a background in punk bands and I like hip hop, funk, new wave, rock, disco — all kinds of stuff. Maybe three or four years ago was when the night began to show the music we really love.

“In eight years your tastes change. Living in Berlin exposed me to so many new sounds — dubstep, bleepy synth stuff, weird things I’d never have given the time of day to back home.

“Those sounds are the basis for some of my favourite parties here now. I go to ambient gigs, hear people play what sound like air traffic control noises for an hour, and it all feeds back into what we do and who we book.”

The bookings that signalled Bigfoot’s move into more varied territory included German-based artists such as Mr Ties, Roman Fluegel and nd_baumecker, as well as respected British selectors such as JD Twitch and Andy Weatherall.

“We brought in more American artists too, like Kyle Hall, Marcellus Pittman and The Black Madonna,” Patrick continues. “And we had some techno DJs like Tin Man.”

A recent Sub Club edition of Bigfoot’s that brought together US DJ/producer Matrixxman and Englishman-in-Berlin Palms Trax may have been the best example yet of the night’s current diversity.

“You might think that because they’re both on [Amsterdam label] Dekmantel, but one of them [Matrixxman] really bangs it out whereas the other [Palms Trax] plays Afrobeat and disco and stuff.

“Having them play one after the other in Sub Club might have seemed risky but it went really well.

“As well as having people who play diverse music we also try to make sure we’re booking nice, interesting people like them who’re in this for the right reasons. People who don’t just retreat to their hotel rooms immediately after playing but are happy to hang out and talk.”

These days, along with its Sub Club residency, Bigfoot’s maintains regular nights at Sneaky Pete’s in Edinburgh, The Tunnels in Aberdeen (though they’re in the process of moving to Underdog, the space formerly known as Snafu) and a small-scale Berlin venue, Farbfernseher.

The last venue is a 150-capacity space Patrick likens to Sneaky Pete’s, the storied Edinburgh club that was also a recent feature in these pages.

“It’s like Sneaky’s in that it’s tiny and has got a reputation for only having good stuff — it’s the kind of place you can just go to without even checking what’s on.

“A few months after I got to Berlin we did our first party there with Palms Trax, and since then we’ve mostly just done residents’ parties there, which are great because it takes just about all the pressure out of doing a night.”

Farbfernseher hosts one of the Bigfoot’s eighth-birthday shindigs on December 14, but the big one is undoubtedly at Glasgow’s Berkeley Suite on December 10, where Sex Tags Mania label co-head DJ Fett Burger will guest.

“He and his brother [DJ Sotofett] run my favourite night in Berlin [Sex Tags], and they’ve really expanded my mind on what a DJ set can be. If I knew how to do the things they do in a set I’d do them too,” he laughs.

Hot on the heels of all this comes an ambitious Hogmanay party featuring The Black Madonna and nd_baumecker that Bigfoot’s and Sneaky’s have lined up at The Biscuit Factory in Edinburgh.

“We decided we’d only do a Hogmanay party if we could get The Black Madonna,” Patrick adds. “The first time we saw her was a few years ago at Panorama Bar [in Berlin] and we were like, ‘who the f*** is that?’ It was the first time she’d played that venue and it was my first year in Berlin, and nobody really knew her in Europe yet. As soon as we left we were talking about getting her to the Sub Club, and we’ve had her there twice now.

“She has an amazing connection with everyone in the room when she plays and unbelievable DJ skills. I have to hit myself in the face when I watch her, she’s that good.”

Even if you’re on the biggest of big nights out, Hogmanay inevitably comes with a hefty dose of reflection on the year gone by. It would seem appropriate, therefore, to bid farewell to 2016’s myriad horrors with a raucous celebration of the benefits of diversity.

Bigfoot’s Tea Party hosts fourth-birthday parties in Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Berlin over four nights from December 2-14, details at: bit.ly/2fFg2MN . Tickets for The Bigfoot’s/Sneaky Pete’s Hogmanay party at: bit.ly/2ggIet8