The Perfect Garden existed in barely the blink of an eye in the late 1980s. A Dunedin five-piece imbued with ambition and a studiously post-punk, indie, shoegazing musical ethic, the sum total of their studio recording legacy is four songs – all smart, stylish, guitar-lashed alt anthems – that were somehow discovered by a US record company 35 years later and rendered onto vinyl.

The Perfect Garden (from left): Martin Quinn, Kieron Flaherty, Karen Hewitt, Shane Walker, and Aaron Ives.  

Imagine you were in a band when you were a kid in the late 1980s. The band lasted about a couple of years and in that time you recorded just four songs, for a small indie label. They were good songs, released on cassette, but hardly anyone got to hear them before the band called it quits in 1990. Life goes on and your shot at rock stardom is a distant memory.

Roll forward 34 years. The owner of a small American record label somehow finds one of your songs on YouTube and is instantly a fan. Before you know it, your music is being re-released internationally on vinyl.

You can’t make this stuff up; it just doesn’t happen in the real world. But it happened to Southland musician and music school co-owner Aaron Ives, whose late 80s band The Perfect Garden enjoyed something of a renaissance, decades after emergence in the Dunedin music scene.

The Perfect Garden (from left): Martin Quinn, Aaron Ives, Shane Walker, Karen Hewitt, and Kieron Flaherty. 

There are two key players in this unlikely turn of events: Rob Mayes, musician, sound engineer, longtime music fan and owner of Christchurch indie label Failsafe Records – and Christian Fritz, DJ, longtime music fan and owner of Minneapolis indie record label MPLS Ltd.

Ives was 17 when he began drumming in The Perfect Garden in March 1989. A seventh-former at Dunedin’s St Paul’s High School, he had recently returned from a stint as an AFS exchange student in Japan, where he played in a punk band.

After The Perfect Garden’s first drummer left, Ives was invited to join The Perfect Garden by guitarist Kieron Flaherty – the pair had been mates since form two. Ives was quickly initiated; Flaherty was immersed in British bands such as The Smiths, The Jesus and Mary Chain, and Stone Roses. The influences can be heard loud and clear in The Perfect Garden’s music, much of which was co-written by the band members. Also in the band were singer Karen Hewitt, bass player Martin Quinn, and guitarist Shane Walker.

The Perfect Garden was a perfect support act for prominent South Island bands The 3Ds and The Bats, at legendary venues such as the Empire Hotel. They also rubbed shoulders with Christchurch bands Dolphin, Black Spring and the Holy Toledos.

The South Island had a very close-knit music scene. Two examples: The Perfect Garden won a QEII Arts Council grant in 1990, but as they had already broken up they returned the grant. Christchurch indie scene mates The Holy Toledos received one in the same round, which led to their ‘I Confess’ 12". The distinctive-sounding guitar Andrew Brough used to record the Straitjacket Fits’ seminal 1988 single ‘She Speeds’ – a lawsuit-era Ibanez Gibson copy – was later bought by Kieron Flaherty. You can see it in the ‘She Speeds’ video. Flaherty used that guitar to record the tracks that became the EP titled A Place Not Far from Here.

The Perfect Garden on stage (L-R): Kieron Flaherty, Aaron Ives (drums, obscured), Karen Hewitt

Ives says although The Perfect Garden members wrote songs and rehearsed them every week, “we had no idea about anything technical – we were only mimicking what we were listening to”. This amounted to mainly British and Scottish alternative bands, and the C86 scene, which stemmed from a cassette compilation of rising bands put out by the influential NME magazine in 1986 and spawned noisy guitar bands with female singers, such as The Primitives and Darling Buds.

Although the band members had little belief in their own technical ability, The Perfect Garden certainly had a fresh and seductive sound. It’s no doubt the quality that endeared the band to Rob Mayes, who mixed their live sound whenever they played in Christchurch. A record label owner with a laser-guided ear for recording up-and-coming Christchurch bands, Mayes also played bass guitarist Dolphin, Throw and Springloader. His Failsafe Records label roster featured many acts, including Loves Ugly Children and The Holy Toledos. Mayes’s vast collection of original recordings is undoubtedly the most comprehensive archive of Christchurch music in existence.

Aaron Ives recording the Perfect Garden EP

It was because of Mayes that The Perfect Garden recorded their EP, A Place Not Far from Here. In March 1990 the band set up their gear in a vacant office space, upstairs in the Christchurch Horticultural Hall. During three days of sessions, four songs were recorded by Kevin Stokes and mixed by Mayes. Nineteen-year-old Aaron Ives’ drum parts were finished on day one.

The four songs recorded were ‘Amelia’, ‘Swirl’, ‘Into the Ground’ and ‘End of the Perfect Sunshine’. For many years the only evidence it had ever happened was on the cassettes of rough mixes Mayes gave the band members.

The Perfect Garden - A Place Not Far From Here EP (Failsafe CD, 2018)

Twenty-seven years later, out of the blue in 2017, Mayes contacted Ives and Flaherty – the only two former bandmates still in touch at the time – saying he was keen to remaster and release the recordings. It was only at that point that The Perfect Garden signed a contract with Failsafe, and Mayes released a limited-edition compact disc of the EP. It came complete with cool art and a booklet, contained in a gatefold cover.

“It’s beautiful,” says Ives. “Between 2017 and 2023 he sold a handful of copies” – Ives laughs – “One sold to Moscow, one sold to Brazil, about five went to the US and another went to my mum.”

The Perfect Garden frontline (L-R): Kieron Flaherty, Karen Hewitt, Martin Quinn

Around 2015 somebody had made a rudimentary video for ‘End of the Perfect Sunshine’ and posted it on YouTube; by the end of 2025 it had been viewed 2400 times. Ives thinks this is how Christian Fritz discovered The Perfect Garden.

Fritz, like Mayes, is a hardcore indie music fanboy and, also like Mayes, runs his own record label, MPLS. He wanted to release the EP on vinyl.

Aaron Ives with the Perfect Garden 12" EP (MPLS Ltd, 2024). - Photo by Chris Chilton 

Ultimately, an arrangement was made and Mayes released the masters to Fritz. Ives and Flaherty agonised for two months over what image to use on the cover. Three hundred copies were pressed, to be distributed in New Zealand by Flying Out.

The Perfect Garden - A Place Not Far From Here 12"  (MPLS Ltd, 2024)

MPLS Ltd, which bore the cost of the production, marketed the release in the US, where it received favourable reviews. “That’s what you start a band for,’’ says Ives, enthusiastically. “Stuff like this. When you’re that age, anyway.

“For us it just seemed to languish for a long time. But then Rob made this beautiful CD and then Christian’s released the vinyl. All these years later to finally get some recognition, it’s quite unbelievable really.”

Although Ives is still in touch remotely with his old mate Flaherty, he isn’t sure they’ll be able to get the band back together for a reunion show anytime soon. Shane Walker is in Canada, Karen Hewitt lives in Tasmania. Martin Quinn is back in Dunedin, and Flaherty lives in Cambridge, England. Ives is now in Invercargill where he runs Music South, a music school and recording studio, with his partner Hollie Longman.

Having been in the business most of his adult life, Ives knows only too well there’s not a lot of money to be made in music. “It’s rewarding for the soul, not the bank balance,” he says. “Taylor Swift is pretty safe on top of the music rich list.”

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